


Kintsugi

by KiwiMeringue



Series: Kintsugi [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Content warning: Suicide, F/M, It's a kirigakure fic there's going to be a buttload of murder, Kirigakure, and general unpleasantness, rating this as explicit just to be safe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-26
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2018-03-25 19:09:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 96,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3821578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KiwiMeringue/pseuds/KiwiMeringue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ninja are unfeeling weapons, to be used and discarded. Nowhere is this truer than the Village Hidden in the Mist, and since the day she was born, Kotone has been raised for this alone. An orphan left in the street to die, Zabuza has hardened himself to survive; but a heart is a resilient thing. It can be broken, withered, neglected and suppressed, but deep down, even the fiercest shinobi is still human. On ambition, obedience, and the cost of both.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Breathe Again](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/111490) by Renea (who is also me). 



She knows better than to ask, but has maybe been a little less than subtle about her interest in the little stall set up in the street. So, when her father offered to buy her one of the delicious-looking fish-shaped-cake-things she so coveted if she successfully beat her time swimming the distance between the pier and the nearest island, she had redoubled her efforts.

Now, exhausted and pigtails still dripping, the five year old stands on her tiptoes to peer over the edge of the cart as her father tosses a few coins to the street vendor, and he in turn passes the treat into her hands. Even in the summer, the Water Country can be cold, and little tendrils of steam rise with the mouth-watering scent. The fluttering in her chest is unfamiliar. She isn’t used to wanting things. She’s even less used to getting them.

It’s too warm to eat right away, so she eyes it anxiously as they continue home, so much so that she doesn’t notice the other child running towards her until he’s already snatched it from her hands and darted away.

A cautious glance upwards finds her father watching her indifferently, and he gestures with a slight nod of his head towards the fleeing street urchin.

The girl pursues.

She’s much faster than he had expected. She catches up to the thief in an instant, and she pounces, knocking his feet out from beneath him in a well-practiced motion. He’s smaller than she is, thinner, clothes dirty and worn, and she can see now that they’re about the same age. His eyes are dark, like his skin, and like his hair, and he’s staring at her, not scared, just surprised.

There’s a sharp whistle from behind her and she immediately turns her head, her father standing where she’d left him, face hard and unreadable but certainly not pleased. “That’s enough. Get back here **_now_**.”

She does as she’s told, scrambling off the other child, and trotting obediently back to her father’s side. The boy sits up enough to brush the gravel off of her prize, and crams it into his mouth while he has the chance. She thinks of his hollow cheeks and bony wrists, and though she doesn’t understand why, she doesn’t mind, now, if he has it.

Her father’s face is stony when she looks back up at him, eyes obscured by the glare across glass lenses. Taking his hand and hurrying to match his stride, a hesitant sound catches in her throat. “Could… could I get another one?”

Her father glances down at her.

“You let that street boy sneak up on you,” he says. “You should know better.”

Thoughtfully, she digs a sharp little eye-tooth into her lip and lowers her eyes. She knows better than to argue. Glancing over her shoulder, just for a moment, before they’re swallowed up by the crowd, she can catch the other child watching her intently.

“Come on,” her father says, brushing her hand away, “time to go.”

/ / / /

He sees them again a month later.

She’s easy to recognize (same dark pigtails, same pale eyes, same pale skin), and he recalls the man as well, tall and snowy-haired. The gash bisecting his neck, however, is new.

The girl sits beside his corpse on the damp cobblestones, picking shards of broken glass from his skin. From the imprint of the wire frames still visible in the ashy flesh, someone must have smashed his eyeglasses into his face.

Off and on again, a light shower of rain had been falling over the city, so the two men fussing over the massive pile of damp wood in the square are getting impatient as the pyre refuses to light. There are other bodies laid out, waiting, but she ignores them. She doesn’t seem to notice him, either, and just sits, vacantly, watching the body, awaiting instruction that will never come.

It’s not until he’s drifted close enough for his shadow to fall over her that she jumps. He can tell by the way she tenses that she recognizes him, ready for some form of retaliation, but he doesn’t move and she returns to her pointless vigil.

She doesn’t say anything and after a long silence he finally turns to leave.

“Please don’t—!”

When he looks back again she’s twisted to face him, one hand braced against the ground, the other clasped hastily over her mouth.

“I mean,” she says between her fingers, voice small and uncertain, before hesitantly letting her hand rest in her lap. “Please don’t go. I’m just— I’m not supposed to talk to other kids, ever, really, so...”

He takes another step closer, and she swivels around to sit facing him. “Why not?”

“I’m not sure,” she admits, shrugging a little. “He just said not to; that it was really important, but…” her brow furrows slightly. “But I think he meant when I started at the academy, soon… I don’t think he meant you, so… So I guess it’s okay. ”

The boy raises his eyebrows skeptically. “You always do what people tell you, for no reason?”

“I was going to be a ninja, like dad was,” she answers, blinking at him. Her voice is little more than a whisper. “That’s what being a ninja means. You don’t ask questions, you just do what the person in charge says.”

“That’s stupid,” he says, puzzled and maybe a little annoyed when it doesn’t elicit any real kind of reaction. “You going to go do that now?”

“I can’t.” She gestures to the two men at the other end of the street, who have finally just gotten the fire to catch. “I asked them already. They said they don’t take new students until November, and I’d have to stay somewhere else until then.”

“Do you have anywhere else to go?”

Her pigtails sway as she shakes her head. “Some adults broke our door down. They said they were…” she pauses, eyes screwed shut. “’Re-appropriating village assets,’” she recites, carefully picking through each unfamiliar syllable, “and that I had to leave. They said I could find my father here, so I did. And now…” She lets out a deep breath, slowly, head canted thoughtfully to one side, “and now I don’t know what to do.”

She rubs at her eyes with the heel of her hand. They had started loading bodies onto the pyre and the damp air was filling with smoke and the acrid, familiar smell of burning hair and whatever material made up those reinforced jackets. They’re always burning bodies here, so he’s used to it, knows to keep from facing downwind. He also knows they’ll be over here in a moment to chase her away from the body, and he had approached her for a reason.

“I had a head start, but you caught up to me like it was nothing, then knocked me flat on my face,” he starts carefully. He knew not to steal from the ones with those jackets, or the metal plates, but he’d never expected that kind of trouble from her. “You learned that from him, right?” She nods, glancing back towards her father, and apparently deciding to close the pile of broken glass down, carefully, into one of his loosely clenched hands— there are still shards embedded deep into his blank, staring, eyes, but she hasn’t dared tug on them. She continues to digs out the rest, if only to keep busy.

The girl is still well-fed and strong. He knows that won’t last, and he knows things that will keep her alive when her ribs start to show through her sides and the temperature drops. He knows where to hide from the cold, where to scavenge for food, but not how to keep people bigger, and stronger from taking them from him, and he’s lasted this long but isn’t sure how much longer. The gnawing of his empty stomach’s become a persistent ache. There’s a buzzing in his head and a new weakness in his limbs that’s steadily worsening. “If you teach it to me, I’ll show you some good places to sleep tonight,” he offers, trying to sound casual, but holding in a breath as he waits, loathing his own desperation.

“Yeah?” Slowly, she looks back at him and pushes herself to her feet. She looks uncertain but maybe almost smiles a little. “I could… I could do that, I think.”

When he offers his hand, she takes it, and with a final thoughtful glance at the dead ninja’s corpse, follows him into the street.

/ / / /

The boy points out a few places as they pass them, little nooks and crannies and outcroppings that are out of the wind and rain. He’s found dozens, he tells her, all over the village, because they aren’t the only people living out there, and he can never be sure if any one of those places would be occupied (by someone bigger than he was) on any given night.

She watches, carefully, struggling to make note of their location and any landmarks nearby. She knows the way from her house to the nearest lake, and she’d even been out of the village and deep into the woods once, but besides the limited routes she’d taken with her father, Kirigakure no Sato is strange to her. They’re all old, moss-grown, stone buildings and apartments, dominated by what she knows to be the Mizukage’s headquarters in the center of the city. It all looks the same to her, and quietly she says as much.

“It gets worse when the fog rolls in,” her new companion tells her. “But you get used to it.”

Between the huge cylindrical towers are smaller houses, and shops, and green spaces and uneven rocky escarpments where nothing could be built. She asks him to find her somewhere soft and grassy, because he’s impatient to start training and you can’t learn to fight until you can fall properly. She remembers tackling him, and she remembers him going down like a sack of potatoes, exactly the way her father had warned her not to. They arrive in a little park he’s found for her. It’s really just an overgrown and forgotten corner of the village where someone had tied up some old tires and planks for swings, and the ground’s wet and cold, but there’s enough plush grass between the trees for her purposes. She spends the better part of the day pushing him over, and it’s just when he begins to wonder out loud if she doesn’t just enjoy shoving him that he starts to get it. By the time the sky dims and they call it a day, she’s taught him how to break his fall without breaking his wrists. Cold, wet, and exhausted, he starts back towards the village streets, the other child trailing after him.

He squeezes himself into the tight recess into a store wall where the service door was located. He stops her when she moves to join him. “This is mine,” he tells her, scowling. “I showed you tons of places. Go sleep somewhere else.”

She doesn’t retreat, just blinks at him. “It’ll be warmer if we both stay here.”

There’s just enough room for her if he presses all the way against the wall, and he glares at her, considering his options, before reluctantly shuffling over.

She was lucky enough to have been wearing a sweater when the strange ninja had chased her from her home. She unzips it, peels it off, curls close against his side, and drapes it over them for warmth. It’s a bit damp, but it still keeps the heat in, more than either one of them would generate alone.

“I’m Kotone,” she offers as an afterthought, head resting on his shoulder.

He glances over to find her watching him expectantly.

“Zabuza,” he admits finally. “It’s Momochi Zabuza.”

 

***

He jumps when he wakes to finds her curled against him, but slowly the previous day comes back to him and relaxes in spite of the unfamiliar invasion of his space. Zabuza edges away from the strange girl— Kotone, he reminds himself— and peels himself out from under the damp sweater. He’s still chilled and aching from hours on the cold, hard pavement but he’s warmer than he would usually be, and that makes pulling himself to his feet a bit easier. The movement had woken her, and the girl blinks, yawns, looks up at him, bleary-eyed.

“Morning,” she mumbles as she climbs stiffly to her feet. The air’s damp and her sweater is dewy on the outside. The inside’s a bit drier, so she deems it worth wearing and she shakes it off before pulling it back on.

And then she does something strange, laying her hands flat against the brick wall and pushing forward like she thinks she can move it. “I’m stretching,” she explains when she catches him eyeing her skeptically. “Try it, you’ll feel better.”

She shows him several, and he hesitantly follows along, feeling ridiculous, but it’s hard to see more than a few feet in front of himself this morning, and it’s not like anyone passing by pays attention to him, anyway. They just look down, walk faster, suddenly become interested in the time, or their bags, or anything but the boy starving in the gutter.

He struggles with it, joints stiff and muscles tense, the movements causing an uncomfortable pull. The point, as she explains it, seems to be to **_almost_** hurt yourself now so you don’t ** _really_** hurt yourself later. And besides, she tells him, it’s a good feeling. He’s not sure they’re feeling the same thing, because she seems like she could probably tie herself into a knot if she wanted to.

“You’ll get better,” she promises. “I’ve been doing this for…” she pauses thoughtfully, “…as long as I can remember. Same with fighting. You get better at that, too, the more you do it.”

He sighs, unclasps his fingers, lets his arms drop back to his sides. There’s a familiar hollow ache in his stomach. “Come on, let’s get something to eat. There are a few good places to steal things.”  

“Stealing is bad,” she says quietly.

He raises an eyebrow at her.

“It’s illegal. That means it’s bad. You can’t do things that are illegal.”

“Well I,” he tells her, narrowing his eyes and starting into the road, “plan on eating today. You stay here and starve if you want.” He hears her take a few hesitant steps before jogging to catch up to him, and she falls into step, eyebrows still furrowed, gaze disapproving. “If you don’t eat, you’ll die, and there’s no other way to get food. You want to live, right?” Kotone doesn’t say anything. “You… don’t you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, do you want to die then?” he says a bit more sharply, watching as she contemplates this for a moment, pale eyes thoughtful.

“No,” she replies finally.

“Then you want to live,” Zabuza asserts, “because those are your only options. If you don’t want to die, you want to live.”

“I guess,” she shrugs, and then she’s staring at him as they walk. Just sort of studying him for far too long and he can just feel her taking in his scrawny frame and dirty hair. He’s about to snap at her to say whatever it is she’s going to when she does, unprompted. “So…” the girl starts, still watching him curiously, “do you want to live, then?”

“What kind of stupid question is that?” He looks at her incredulously. “Of **_course_** I do.” And she’s still waiting, like this warrants an explanation, like the will to survive isn’t etched into the deepest parts of all living things, all people.

Well, he thinks, something constricting in his chest— most people.

“Living is hard,” he concedes, risking a glance over at her still-unsettling gaze. “You have to fight, and claw, and use everything you have to take anything you can get. Some—” he looks back over at her, makes sure she hasn’t heard the waver in his voice, steels himself, continues, “some people can’t do that and those people die. I don’t want to be one of those people.” He stops, ducks into an alleyway because they’ve arrived in the market. It’s still too early to be quite bustling, and he can’t get a good look at any but the nearest stalls, but if he can’t see them, then they can’t see him and that can only help. “That’s why it doesn’t matter if it’s illegal to steal. All that matters is not getting caught,” he tells her when she creeps into their hiding place behind him. “Living’s more important than anyone’s stupid rules. It’s more important than anything.”

She just shakes her head, slowly, her now-disordered pigtails swaying with the motion. “I don’t think that’s true. I mean, that isn’t what…” She just shakes her head more resolutely. “I’m going to be a ninja. That means ** _I_** have to follow the rules no matter what.”

“I don’t care what you do,” he tells her, scowling at the annoying creature still watching him placidly as he eyes the visible carts and stalls, waiting for one of the vendors to drop their guard. “Just don’t come crying to me when your stomach starts to eat itself.”

“I won’t,” she promises, almost cheerfully, as he dashes out into the fog after his prey.

To her credit, she doesn’t. She’s curled, knees drawn tight to her chest, back in the alleyway when he returns, sinking his teeth into the apple he’d just swiped off the latest cart. It’s been a successful day for him, the other few small morsels he’d made off with already bolted down. He’d seen her scavenging, digging through waste bins and finding nothing.

She glances up and over as he takes another loud mouthful but doesn’t say anything, even as her stomach rumbles piteously. He sighs, glances down at the shiny red apple, rolling his eyes.

He doesn’t care, he insists to himself, but she’s no good to him dead or feeble. Besides, since he’s already shown her several good places to sleep and she’s uninterested in any advice he has on stealing, he’s already given up most of his value. It was an uneven exchange and she’s sure to notice. And when she realizes he’s useless to her, she’s bound to leave him, won’t she? Sure, he can now fall over and frustrate himself bending like an idiot, but that isn’t want he wants to know.

“Here,” he drops his hand, offering it to her, nudges her with the unbitten side when she just stares at it. “Come on, take it. Before I change my mind.”

She reaches up, uncertain, takes it from his hand like she’s waiting for him to snatch it back. When he doesn’t, Kotone thanks him quietly before taking a bite, sighing contentedly.

“You keep teaching me to fight and I’ll keep you fed. How does that sound?” This is a very, very stupid deal to make because he’s barely been able to feed himself but his belly’s full and it’s making him far too confident. He’ll manage somehow.

“And we can keep each other warm,” she adds. “That’s good for both of us.” There’s a little tug at the corners of her mouth, and he’s starting to wonder if that isn’t as much of a smile as she can manage. He plunks himself down beside her and waits. Slowly, taking controlled, measured bites and chewing as long as she can to make the apple last, she devours it core and all.

 

/ / / /

“When they take new students at the academy, you should come too,” She tells him as she carefully adjusts his outstretched arm. He’s led her back to the abandoned green space they’d been using the day before. He understands punching, of course, but he fights like a wild animal in a trap. She’s trying to show him how to get the most out of it, how to do it **_right_** , the way her father had taught her. He’s untrained, and his technique is sloppy, but he’s watching her carefully and remembers every correction she makes and is altogether improving minute by minute. He’d do well at the academy… really well. “It’s a place to sleep, and there’s food…You’d be out of the cold. They’d be able to teach you way more of this than I can. And really,” she continues, remembering everything she’d been taught about duty, and service, “it’s an honour to be a ninja and protect the village. There’s nothing better a person could do with their life.”

He scowls at her, dropping his fighting stance to sit in the damp grass and she folds her legs under herself beside him. “I told you, I don’t want to spend my life being bossed around. Who’s giving the orders, anyway?”

“Let’s see…” Kotone trails off, eyes turned upwards as she tries to recall the chain of command as she’d had it explained to her. “Academy students become genin when they graduate. It must be hard, because not many do,” she counts that rank off on her fingers. “Genin eventually get promoted to chunin, but first they get assigned to teams for every mission, overseen by a jonin. Jonin are in charge of chunin, too. ”

“Who tells jonin what to do?”

“Other jonin, I think. Some are still higher up than others… some answer directly to the Mizukage himself, but in a kind of a way everyone’s orders come from the Mizukage, through other people, when you get right down to it.”

“And who does he take orders from?”

“Oh,” she exclaims softly, thinking for a moment, but no, nothing comes to mind. “The Mizukage’s in charge of everything. Nobody gives him orders.” He lets out a, low, airy kind of a sound that was halfway to being a laugh.

“Maybe I’ll be Mizukage, then.”

She just looks at him, mouth quirked to one side, head inclined in thought because what he’s saying makes absolutely no sense. “You can’t be the Mizukage,” Kotone replies, brow furrowed in confusion. “The **_Mizukage_** is the Mizukage.”

He lets out another long, noisy breath, exasperated. “Anyone ever tell you you’re like talking to a wall?”

“No,” she shakes her head, not as offended as she thinks he’d like her to be. She doesn’t have a word for it, but there’s a strange lightness in her now, a sort of energy. Like something heavy’s been lifted, and she wants it to continue. “You know,” she says as she gets back to her feet, and encourages him to do the same so they can get back to work. “I’ve never really had anyone to talk to before, so I’m probably not very good at it. It’s… It’s better than being alone, maybe. ” she’s not sure they’re the right words, but they’re all she has.

They keep training together until nightfall.

“How long have you been out here?” she asks night as they curl into a sheltered place behind a shed for the evening.

“I don’t know,” he says. “What month is this?”

It’s late August. He’s been alone since March.

“Huh,” he says, voice low, when she tells him. “I think I’m six now.”

/ / / /

The next morning finds them in the park again, and she shows him how to block, how to knock her fist out of the way as she’d been doing yesterday. He’s good and he learns quickly but he’s dealing with months of cumulative fatigue and starvation and she inadvertently knocks the wind out of him with a solid blow to the chest. Kotone takes a step back and watches him uneasily as he struggles to breathe, deems it a good time for a break. He’s weak now, but he wouldn’t be if given the opportunity. She’s quickly growing weaker herself.

“Those aren’t worth anything, are they?” Zabuza asks when he catches her absently playing with one of her earrings.

Her father had let her get them a few months ago, made her promise she’d take care of them herself, and she had, rubbing them with stinging alcohol and never getting an infection. An easy, beginner flesh wound to care for, he’d told her. The last time she’d taken them out she’d noticed the pale pink flaking off the stud where it attached to the post, revealing unnaturally bright glossy white underneath. “No,” she tells him, and he sighs. “They’re just plastic. My mom had a real pair like this though. I saw them once, and Dad said I could have them when I was older, but…”

There are shiny, deep-pink ribbons in her hair, though, over the elastics keeping her pigtails in place, and he’s given her an idea. Later, she lurks by the vendor’s carts in the market and is able to trade them to a much younger girl for her paper plate of takoyaki while her parents’ backs are turned.

She tears back to where the other child is waiting, sets her prize down between them. He seems genuinely surprised when she offers, and it’s her turn to coax him into taking his share.

Someone starts swearing loudly and there’s a sweeping sound, a rush of air, as something on one of the carts bursts into flames momentarily. The flare dies as quickly as it’s sprung up and the irked vendor quickly nudges whatever it was into the trash. Zabuza’s off like a shot towards it and comes back a moment later, passing the scorched, too-hot thing back and forth between his hands.

He lets it fall from his hands as soon as he’s close enough, and drops the blackened fish thing into now-empty paper carton.

“Here,” he says quirking his mouth to the side and averting his eyes as he nudges it towards her. “I owe you one of these. I’m…” he shakes his head still very deliberately not looking at her. “I’m sorry I stole your thing.”

She looks from him to the taiyaki and back again, reaching to tear it in half for them both. It burns, and the filling is steaming when she opens it, her pale palms pink, but she’s used to pain and it isn’t enough for her to really register. “I’m sorry I tackled you,” she tells him, that lightness returning.

She watches his face carefully as he accepts his half of the food, doesn’t seem to notice that she’s lied to him, because she isn’t sorry at all.

She’s very, very glad that she’d gone after him and can’t imagine what would have happened to her if she hadn’t.

She tries though, as she turns the tail-side of the fish shaped cake in her hand, nibbling the burnt bits away so she can eat the good parts all together.

She thinks of him, his drive, his visible desire to survive by any means necessary, to keep living if only because he’s entitled to it. She can see it, and she can identify it, but can’t recognize anything similar within herself. She doesn’t want to die, doesn’t want to be dead, but if she was there isn’t really anything she could do about it so she’s sure she wouldn’t mind. She plans to go to the academy, of course, become a ninja, but she knows they won’t miss her if she doesn’t make it, won’t even notice.

She’s just… here, because she is, and because that’s how it worked out, and while she’s here she might as well stay and see if she can last long enough to get there.

She knows exactly where she would be if he wasn’t here.

 _Dead,_ she realizes quietly as she sinks her teeth into the warm filling she had never gotten the opportunity to taste. It’s sweet potato. It’s delicious, better than she could have imagined whem she wasn’t starving.

_I would just be dead._

/ / / /

It’s getting colder.

Most of the trees in the area are conifers but there are a few broadleaf species dotting the village, white birch, and aspen, and their foliage changes from green to yellows and oranges and deep reds and their limbs are beginning to grow bare.

They can see their breath and night, and then all day.

A kind of dread settles into Zabuza’s stomach when the first few fat, wet, snowflakes drift from the sky one morning. It’s not a lot, just enough to dust open places in their training spot white, but it’s a sign of things to come— a bad omen.

Their hiding places dwindle, as only a few are good enough to protect against snow and freezing rain, and they begin to return to the same place, a tight spot beneath the stairwell of an apartment complex, that a faulty lock on the side entrance lets them slip inside. Looking up, there’s a considerable section of railing missing a few floors above, and the stairway has been cordoned off. There already seem to be few tenants, and so between the identical but functioning stairway on the other side of the building and the elevator they can hear droning through the walls, no one seems to come this way. It’s a good spot and they’re willing to defend it if they have to. Kotone’s started nesting, keeping things there. She’s got all the change she’s found, or been given by a sympathetic passer-by, tucked safely away there, along with a pile of every discarded scrap of clothing or fabric she’s been able to find, anything else she’s salvaged from the trash. All in all, it isn’t much.

He notices that she’s a lot thinner than she had been, slower. He’s learned a lot from her over the last weeks, everything he could want to know about taijutsu. Probably more than he’d need. He can keep pace with her now, though that pace is in decline. He tells himself he’ll wait just a bit longer before setting off on his own again. Every day, just a little bit longer.

They have to move around, sometimes, widening their hunting grounds when the people in the market or on any given street start to expect him.

Zabuza and Kotone are wandering a far corner of the village the first time it starts to snow in earnest. The sky is dark and clouds are low-hanging as it begins, and though it would be safest to head back to familiar territory, he’s never been this way before and there could be something advantageous here.

Like an entire block of abandoned houses.

He doesn’t believe what he’s seeing, stops dead in the street before dashing over to confirm it. They’re walled-in, all old houses, traditional and elaborate under the years of neglect marring their surfaces. There are no signs of life anywhere he can see, all the windows dark if not boarded-up.

And then Kotone takes off running after him, grabs him by the wrist before he can approach any further. “You can’t go in there,” she says as she gasps to catch her breath. “I think that might be the Kaguya compound.”

“It’s totally empty,” he furrows his brow indignantly, eyeing the massive waste of useable space. “Why isn’t anyone living there?”

“My father said this place is haunted,” she starts, backing away and trying to pull him with her. “A lot of people died here.”

He wrenches his hand away, rubs at his wrist where she’d grabbed him. “I’m not afraid of ghosts,” he snaps. “There’s no such thing.”

She shakes her head, tangled pigtails swinging wildly. She’s been trying to keep them tidy, combing them out with her fingers, but her hair is dirty and stringy and tangled and they get worse every time she does them. “Even if there isn’t that place isn’t empty. Please,”   she reaches out, gestures for him to back away with her and reluctantly, he does. “My father also told me that some very, very dangerous people have kind of taken it over. There are these shinobi—they report directly to the Mizukage, get all the most dangerous missions—It’s the highest honour there is, really, but I really, really don’t think it would be good to run into one right now.” She doesn’t seem scared, not as much as she maybe should be if what she’s saying is true, but she’s insistent and he holds his hands up in a placating gesture as he walks away from the compound.

She takes his hand as they start towards home, like she thinks he’ll go back if she lets go of him. He isn’t an idiot, but it’s cold so he doesn’t pull away again, eventually leaning against her.

The snow’s started to pile up, wet and heavy, and their footsteps make sloppy crunching sounds as they go. This will probably stay, and then there’ll be more, and more.

“What’s a Kaguya?” he asks after a long silence, rubbing a great cold glob of snow from his face. He listens, enthralled and horrified, as she explains the concept of a bloodline ability—powerful techniques that couldn’t be taught, or learned… and they were gone.

“Why would anyone **_destroy_** something like that, if they had it?”

“They were powerful, and The Second suspected that they were plotting against him. That’s something called treason, so he had them all executed.”

“And there are none left anywhere?”

She shrugs a little. “I don’t think so.”

He’s silent for a long time after that, just watching the snow fall more heavily and contemplating the Kaguya Clan with a kind of disbelief. There had been others, she tells him, killed by ninja, hunted even by mobs of normal villagers, until nothing remained but the Hoozuki family, granted special favour because the Second himself had been one.

What a waste.

“You really believe in ghosts?” he asks her when the silence seems to have gone on a bit too long, watching the spectral plume of his breath disperse in front of him.

She nods, insists that her father believed in them so they must be real. “I mean, he went to visit mom a lot. Keep her sprit happy.” She pauses for a long moment, jams her other hand into the pocket of her tattered jacket. “He never showed me where she was buried, so I don’t know how I’m going to visit her. He always talked about her watching me, though, that I had to make her proud. I’ll make them both proud, soon.”

“Is your dad buried somewhere?”

“Oh, no,” she says simply. “You saw. They don’t do that sort of thing with shinobi. Funerals and graves are for people.”

 

////

 

The wind picks up, whipping the wet snow and ice into their eyes, and faces. About halfway to their hideaway, they duck into the entrance of a shop to escape it, and it shields them from the storm well enough to wait out the worst of it.

A few alley cats seem to have had the same idea, and are curled tightly into themselves in the corners of the sheltered space. Zabuza’s always found them to be a nuisance, unpleasant and just another competitor for scraps of food, but Kotone’s always been interested in them. She crouches to stroke them and they purr, three of them approaching and offer their ears for scratches, rub themselves possessively against her knees. She reaches out to pat another, still coiled into a little orange ball. She jumps, jerks her arm back and away, as it lashes out without warning, just barely rakes its claws across the back of her hand.

“Fourth one’s unlucky,” she mumbles to herself, rubbing at the shallow white marks where it grazed her.

She’s nearly crushed when the door flies open, and an irate shopkeeper brandishes a broom at the two homeless children. “Filthy little **_mutt_** ,” he hisses at them as he chases them back into the snow, and they run the rest of the way back as fast as their legs can carry them through the cold and the wet, ice crystals stinging as they whiz by.

In his haste to get out of the cold, he almost forgets to press his ear to the door before nudging it open to make sure no one’s coming; but the coast is clear and they collapse inside, panting and shivering.

“Why does that keep happening,” she says between heavy breaths, shedding her soaked sweater from her scrawny frame and laying it out, as best she can in the cramped little alcove, to dry. “People keep shouting that at us.”

He’s been trying to brush the snow from his dark hair before it all melts, stops, dark eyes fall on her then quickly look away.   “Not us,” he says as he pulls himself out of his soaked shirt, climbs into her thin pile of soft things. “It’s me.”

He’s been trying to avoid sharing any more about himself than he has to, but she’s watching him curiously, settles down beside him. He’s grateful for the contact because cold as she is, she’s still a heat source against him and he feels chilled right down to the bones he can see through his skin. Maybe he should take a break from training with her, too, because that run back took even more out of him than he’d have expected, and there’s a deep ache in his joints and back when he moves, and even when he doesn’t. “People are stupid, and weak. Afraid of anything unusual,” he begins uneasily.

“You mean like the bloodline families—?”

“—or foreigners.”

She furrows her brows at him again, perplexed. “But there **_are_** no foreigners here. Kirigakure has never needed any alliances with any other Hidden Villages, so we’re technically at war with everybody all the time. Nobody ever comes to live here from anywhere else.”

“Not in the village, no, but I used to live in a fishing village west of here,” she perks up at the new information and he’s sure to continue and cut her off before she asks him for details. “A lot of stuff from the continent ships in there. Sailors from all over would come in, so I’ve seen people from The Land of Lightning. People could always tell they were from away, because a lot of them have dark skin, like—” he holds up his hand as an example, is about to say ‘like me’ but that’s not really true. Those sailors and fishermen from Kaminari no Kuni had a darker, richer, warmer, tone. There were fairer ones too, though, and those ones could pass unnoticed. “But they came and went, so people just kept their distance, ignored them, but nobody liked them being there.” He wills himself to unclench his jaw. “My mother was half, I think. Nobody liked her, either.” His complexion had been washed-out by Land of Water pallor, leaving him more grey than anything else, but enough for people to recognize it as foreign. No one had wanted anything to do with her when she had been alive, and when she’d died, no one had wanted anything to do with him. He remembers them lowering their eyes when they passed, ignoring him, if not looking down with outright contempt, or chasing him away.

He’d walked for days to reach the larger village, where he thought he might have a better chance, where there may be more for him.

He had neglected to return his outstretched hand to his side, has been contemplating it as he spoke, only notices this when Kotone takes it, twines her fingers through his.

She’s learned a lot of fun words since she’s been living on the street, from people who chase her away from their trash bins or who notice as Zabuza robs them, or the women in the more dingy parts of town who never seem to be dressed warmly enough. Those words are decisive, and forceful, and she likes them.

“That’s fucked up,” she says softly, and he almost laughs because it sounds wrong in her even, childish voice, but there’s no law against it so he guesses that she doesn’t care. She glances down at his hand, brushes her thumb against his skin. “For what it’s worth, I think it’s nice.”

It isn’t worth much, but he squeezes her hand a bit tighter.

Kotone’s pale, dark haired, couldn’t look more like she belonged here if she tried. Sometimes people on the street will take pity on her as they never have on him, give her a few coins, something to eat. He tells himself that he doesn’t want their pity, but she always shares what she has, and he takes a grim satisfaction in having things that were definitely not meant for him. Maybe it’s that, maybe it’s because she’s a girl. It probably helps that she’s so pretty, even dirty and tattered. It’s probably a bit of all three. It’s all the more reason to stick around her, really, use these things to his advantage.

He supposes it must take a while, longer than it would take an observer to find her worthy of their help, to notice that there’s something very wrong with her; that tangible kind of emptiness inside that he envies. She never seems afraid, or angry, but he’s never really seen her happy, either. That tiny smile that he’s not sure she notices herself might speak to a kind of contentment, but he can’t be sure.

He is sure that she doesn’t have to fight to keep her breath from shuddering when she talks about her father, the way he’s fighting now.

“You saw my dad,” she says curling up against him for the night. “What was your mom like?”

He lets out a slow breath, shrugs like he doesn’t care, because maybe if he pretends hard enough it will be true. It’s not like it will change anything, so why weigh himself down with sentimentality.

“She was sad all the time,” is all he can think to tell her.

“About what?”

“I don’t know. Everything. Me, probably… People said it was worse after she had me….” It’s low, mostly to himself, really, but she’s heard him, and she’s just watching him now, arranges the dirty clothing and stained towels of their little nest around him more snugly when he starts to shiver. It doesn’t help.

“What happened to her?”

He stays quiet for a long while, and she doesn’t press the issue. Just stays silent and tries to sleep, but he can feel it hanging in the air between them. Fine, he thinks. He’s told her this much.

“She didn’t want to live,” he says, trying to mimic the detachment that comes so naturally to her, ball up the weight on his heart and the lump in his throat, shove them way down, deep inside himself where they can never cause him trouble again.

He fails, and he’s sure she hears a note of something in his voice because he does, but he’ll learn. Maybe that takes time too, and he’ll keep trying until it becomes second nature, until nothing can ever hurt him, until he never, ever has to fight back tears.

////

Zabuza is shivering violently when he wakes, Kotone beside him insistently nudging at his shoulder. Her voice is unclear, and it takes him far longer than it should to process the sound, his thoughts slow and hazy. It’s when she lays the back of her hand against his forehead that he puts it together.

Finally he’s able to crack an eye open and tries to push her away, but the movement sends a jolt of pain through his arm, down his spine. The chill and aches he’d written off the night before have worsened. He’s cold and everything hurts, both in this deep, penetrating kind of a way that doesn’t care how tightly he had bundled himself in their bedding, or how carefully he moves.

Still, he struggles to his feet, teeth chattering. He’s fine, he tells her, hoping it comes out coherently. He’ll be fine. They have a deal, a use for one another, and he knows what’s bound to happen if he can’t keep up his end of the bargain. His traitorous body refuses to comply with his mind’s demands and sways as he’s overcome with an intense wave of nausea.

The boy tries to bolt for a far corner of the room, where he can be sick without contaminating their already filthy nest, but a step is all he manages before the room tilts sideways and everything goes black.

When he becomes aware of his surroundings again, slowly, the same process of bringing a dim and confused world into focus, he’s staring at the underside of the stairs. He’s in bed, a just thin towel between the cold concrete floor and his back, the rest heaped on top of him carefully, but as he’d suspected, Kotone is gone, and a quick glance to the side tells him that so is the small pile of coins she’s squirreled away.

 _Fine_ , he thinks, trying to quell the panic rising in him as he succumbs to fatigue, eyes fluttering shut. _Who needs her?_

When he drifts off, his dreams are frantic and nonsensical, of fear, and helplessness and blood pooling on a familiar bathroom floor.

////

Kotone jams her hands deep into the pockets of her sweater. It keeps them warm, but more importantly she can keep a tight grip on the precious cargo she’s hidden there, all in all just over thirty ryo.

The girl is concerned that she’s caught the boy’s fever herself, because her brain doesn’t seem to be working quite as quickly as it should. She can feel her heart pounding in her chest, and there’s a restlessness that keeps her from staying still for any length of time as she wanders around the village streets, looking upwards in search of a sympathetic face. She tugs on sleeves, and approaches passers-by, but they ignore her, and she can feel her voice becoming more strained the longer she tries to get their attention.

“Excuse me—”

“—he’s very sick and—”

“—please I need to buy some medicine for him, and—!”

She bites her lip, thinking. She doesn’t want to be away for any longer than she has to, and this isn’t working. There’s a small pharmacy down the street, and she finds herself hastening towards it. Maybe she’s wrong. Maybe she has enough.

The only useful thing under thirty ryo in the entire store is a box of cookies. She finds the aisle with all the promising bottles of pills, finally, triumphantly, spots one with “fever” on the label, but she’d need the amount of money she has many, many times over to buy it, and her stomach sinks.

She glances up, and then down the aisle, sees no one. There’s only one person working, and the small store has a few other shoppers but they’re nowhere near her. She imagines her father, can practically see the disapproval in his face, but there’s no one living watching her.

She shouldn’t.

She really, really shouldn’t.

But her father had taught her that fevers were dangerous, and Zabuza could die.

Living was more important than anything, right? Maybe not to her, but he wasn’t going to be a ninja like she was. He was going to be a person who lived in the village instead of belonging to it, the kind of person she was supposed to be protecting, the kind of person who was whole, whose life had value.

She takes another quick look over both shoulders, then up in search of cameras, and sees no one and nothing. Carefully the girl reaches up, catches the edge of the bottle with her fingers and rolls it towards her until she can take hold of it and stuff it under her sweater.

She’s borrowing this, she tells herself. One day, when she’s a ninja, with missions and an income, she’ll come back and pay for it.

But for now, she thinks resolutely, this will be her first mission. She’ll be sneaky, and she’ll succeed, because she remembers what her father had taught her. The most important thing, more important than anything in the world, the **only** thing that matters, is to always, **_always_** accomplish the mission.

She wants to pull the next bottle in the row forward to hide the loss, but isn’t tall enough. When she strains to reach it, she hears the pills clatter accusingly against the plastic. She takes a step, and her blood runs cold as they clatter again, just loudly enough to betray her.

The girl takes in a slow breath, lets it out just as slowly as she tries to move again, every muscle focused and deliberate. Ninja can move quietly, none more so than the shinobi of Kirigakure. It can be done. If she can just be careful enough…

She creeps forward, one step, then two, easing herself along so that nothing jostles, her breath caught in her throat.

Hands back in her pockets, one clutching her money the other disguising the lump in her jacket, she forces herself into a less suspicious pace, taking slow strides out of the aisle, pretending to just be browsing listlessly. She’s convinced that if she leaves now, they’ll know what she’s done. She has a vague, **_audacious_** , idea of how to stave off suspicion, though, and forces herself down the next row of shelves and then towards the cashier, ignoring the way her heart hammers in her chest.

“Just these please,” she says to the man behind the counter as she nudged the box of cookies towards him and carefully counts her coins out on the table.

////

“Hey. Hey, wake up.”

He groans, bleary eyed as he slowly becomes aware of the cold and the pain again. His heart is racing and he knows that the dream, quickly slipping away from his memory as he tries to recall it, wasn’t pleasant.

She’s kneeling beside him, pressing something, insistently, into his hands. It’s another one of her little treasures; a mug she rescued from a dumpster, chipped and jagged around the rim but still able to hold water, and it’s fine to drink from if you’re careful of the sharp edges. She’s left some snow in it to melt, he can tell, from both the freezing temperature of the ceramic against his skin, and the bits of slush still bobbing inside. It’s that, and two small white capsules, and she’s urging him to take both.

“Where did you get these?” his voice is weak but she hears him, and looks away. The guilty, scolded-puppy look in her eyes is answer enough, but that little not-smile pulls at her lips when he pops the pills into his mouth. His hands shake, and she helps him raise the mug to swallow them down.

The water’s freezing and sends a jolt right through his already-chilled core, but his brain still isn’t working quite like it should be so in the absence of coherent thought, he just follows her instructions, and drinks.

The world still has a feverish, dreamlike quality and it’s only when the frigid water sinks into his belly and her hand is warm against his shoulder that he realizes she’s real, and he blinks at her stupidly, wide eyed and stunned. “You’re here.”

“’Course I am,”Kotone says, blinking right back at him, voice tinged with worry. “I told you, didn’t I? I said I’d be back as soon as I could. You groaned, kinda, so I thought you’d heard me, but…” She plunks down next to him, radiating heat against his side, and shushes quietly when he complains that she’ll catch his fever.

It’s not long after that he feels the pain sink away, and suddenly his body can retain the heat trapped by their makeshift blankets. When he falls asleep again, it’s dreamless and deep, interrupted only when she nudges him awake for more pills, keeping time as best she can from quick glances outside.

The next morning, Zabuza is well enough to stand but not yet strong enough to outrun anyone, and joins her as she digs through trashcans and scavenges public places for forgotten things.

She’s told him all about her little exercise with the pill bottle, which he’s got jammed into his pocket, and he’s more than a bit intrigued by her stories of Kirigakure’s ninja as silent predators, creeping through the mist undetected. He’s mindful of the bottle as he scouts for anything useful, and soon finds that with a little effort it’s easy to keep them from rattling. After this long picking pockets and stealing from carts, he thinks, skulking and going unnoticed are second nature.

He calls her over when a torn open trash bag, shallow in the dumpster’s strata, reveals several sweaters. They’re stained and most are torn, the one he holds up for her slashed open right along the side, but she digs into the pile.

“Oh!” she exclaims, turning one of the identical garments over in her hands. “I know this. Academy students wear them; they’re standard-issue.” Her face lights up as something comes to her. “Hey—if people are throwing out old uniforms, they must have graduated, right? That means that there’ll be another class starting soon. It’s almost that time, isn’t it?” Content with their find, she lugs it home.

There’s this sinking feeling in his chest when he thinks too hard about the uniforms; not anything he can really place. It’s stupid to question a good thing, because they’re soft and they’re warm and Kotone dumps them into their pile and nests in them eagerly, inviting him to do the same. There’s just this thought he can’t shake as he prods at them, poking a finger through the massive tear through one of the shirts, right over where someone’s heart might be.

He curls up beside her, and tries to put it from his mind.

It’s just that he knows what blood stains look like when they’ve dried, and they look an awful lot like this.

 

/ / / /

 

It’s two days before he’s well enough to stop taking the medicine. He keeps it though, always on him, the few remaining pills kept still by his careful movements. She listens for it, but hears nothing, the way her father had walked, and it had come to him so naturally.

Momochi Zabuza took to silence the way ducklings take to water.

He had taken to everything she’d shown him so quickly. He was clever, and driven, and though it took him a while, physically, to master the new things she’d demonstrated, he’d understood them almost completely the first time they were laid out for him to observe. He took her techniques apart and examined each aspect until it was his own, and until he could explain the purpose of the thing back to her better than she had grasped it herself.

Which is why, when one grey morning she spots a chunin loading children into a borrowed produce cart, she asks him one last time to come with her.

“Please?” she takes his hand so he can’t pretend to ignore her. She bites her lip, thoughtfully, as she tries to pull together the right words. “Come on… You’d be so good at this,” she insists, but there’s something more than that, maybe, something urgent that she can’t quite identify and she really, really thinks he should, but she’s having a hard time articulating why. “I… I think I’d like it a lot if you’d come with me,” she says finally. “I mean, we work well together, right? So we’d be really great ninja together too, I bet.”

He looks at her, mouth drawn tight and eyes narrowed, and her stomach kind of jumps like it does when she finds something good, or when something she’s practicing works out especially well. Maybe it’s just because they’re starving and ankle-deep in snow right now, but she can tell that he’s actually considering it.

“Maybe…” he says hesitantly, in a way she thinks would be a yes if he wasn’t quite so stubborn. “Or, maybe you should just stay here. We’re doing alright.” She can tell he knows he’s lying when he says it, but she doesn’t respond to that. Just shakes her head automatically.

“I have to go,” she says simply, watching the words form little wisps of steam in the cold air. “It’s what I’m for.”

A frustrated kind of a sigh forms its own little cloud and he rolls his eyes. “Alright, alright, fine, just… I don’t know. You go talk to him if you’re so eager. I’ll just… hang back here and see how it goes.”

She assures him that she’ll be right back and skips off to go talk to the ninja for them. He’s always been reluctant to approach adults, tells her she’s stupid for wandering up to people so recklessly, but she’s not sure what there is to be afraid of. She’s never been afraid of anything, really, so maybe she is dumb.

“Excuse me,” she begins as politely as she can when she reaches him. He’s talking into radio, glances down at her and his mouth twitches contemptuously but he doesn’t chase her away. She takes a deep breath, introduces herself, explains her situation.

“Your dad, huh?” he raises an eyebrow. “Who?”

“His name was Ume Gyouten.” She watches, surprised at how long it seems to take for him to recall that name, and finally he grabs her by the her upper arm and hauls her closer for a better look.

“Ume… yeah, I remember an Ume, I think. Didn’t know he had kids— I guess you do look a bit like him.” The man, sandy blond and dark eyed, returns to his hand held radio for a moment. “Yeah… make that twenty-three, I found one more. That’s— augh, finally. Great.” He shoves it back into a pocket of his flak jacket. “Alright then, last one. Come on—” She digs her heels in when he tries to drag her forward.

“No, no wait!” She exclaims. “There’s somebody else, too, I’ve got a—” a what? She’s never really thought about it before, and her mind is racing. “I’ve got a **_friend_**. He wants to come too.”

The man’s eyebrows drop into a scowl. “Listen, you little shit,” he begins, tightening his grip on her arm. “You just filled my quota. We’ve got room for exactly two hundred kids. We’ve got ninety-one waiting at the academy, the other guys out in the smaller villages have eighty-five between them,” he taps at the radio stowed in his pocket, “I had twenty two, and the Nezumis are dropping their own son off themselves. So you, you lucky little bitch, make exactly two hundred. So you’re going to shut up, behave yourself, and come with me.”

She pulls back when he tries to drag her towards the cart, twisting in his grasp to see the road behind her, searching desperately for her friend. Surely, if they meet him, they’ll know he’s worth bringing along, won’t they?

She scans the snowy streets, one way, then another, as quickly as she can, but she can’t see him. He’s disappeared, so she takes a hasty breath to call for him. “Zabuza-kun—!”

She hadn’t seen him raise his hand, but the chunin strikes her so hard that she sags in his grasp, his grip on her arm is the only think keeping her upright. She’s only vaguely aware of being dragged towards the cart and dumped in, other small children, some clean some as tattered and thin as she is, scurrying out of the way as she falls to the wooden floor.

She’s not aware of any time having passed, but when she finally pushes herself up from the bed of the cart (still smelling strongly of cabbage) she realizes that they’re already outside of the village. Kirigakure sits recessed in a little hollow surrounded by high cliffs and the cart is climbing the hill of the main road out of town that she’s travelled the few times her father had taken her to the lake, but they’ll soon be farther from home than she’s ever been.

She wants to put the railing to her back but there’s no space, so she sits in the middle of the cart, pulling her knees tight to her chest and watching the snowy trees creep by. Some of them are talking to one another, but she doesn’t join ,and when another child does try to get her attention she just folds herself over, buries her face in her arms where they’re draped over her knees.

She’d made a friend once, but he’s gone now. Now it’s time to do as her father had taught her.

She doesn’t speak to them doesn’t learn their names, or their faces. She just keeps her eyes on the road, and pretends they don’t exist.


	2. Chapter 2

As the cart presses on, the trees slowly begin to thin. The road is still passing through woodland, but she can see sky between the birches and pines where before there had been bare shrubs and darkness, and hours after nightfall, to once side, the forest disappears entirely.

Unfamiliar seabirds wheel overhead and the air becomes briny. Sure enough, when she sits up, there it is in the distance— the ocean, grey and unending. She’s never seen it before, and judging from their awed expressions, neither have the other children gathering to that side of the cart. She stays where she is, shifting out of their way as they rush past her, and watches them chatter excitedly and point over the horizon.

They finally stop, just where the road curves around a cliff overhanging the sea. Brusquely, their chunin leader orders them all off the cart, hopping to the ground himself, and doesn’t bother to wait for them as he sets off between the trees towards their destination. The children obey, a few having to be nudged awake after the long journey, and clamber to the snowy ground to trail after him.

It doesn’t take long to reach the steep path sinking into the ground, and as they descend it becomes apparent that it’s been carved right out of the cliff side, one half open, precariously, and exposed to the sea air. The less surefooted children cling to the solid side, some merely cautious of the ice slicked path and cold sea spray, but others are pressed against the rock frozen in terror, hands shaking and eyes either screwed shut or fixed on the path’s edge and the drop below.

She recognizes it as fear, anyway, the trembling, the wide eyes and pale faces. She doesn’t pay them much attention as she walks past.

The academy’s heavy doors are propped open, the building itself built right into, and hollowed right out of, the cliff. It’s cold inside, and dim, but she can make out the figures and hushed whispers of other children milling about an antechamber that splits off into darkened corridors that would lead farther underground. Most are boys, but the occasional aspiring-kunoichi is present, all her age or perhaps a bit older. Kotone hangs around the edge of the group, watching as another few new trainees filter into the room until they stop. Finally, with a heavy sigh, their exasperated chunin stalks back outside only to return hauling the last petrified boys inside by the collars of their shirts, one gripped tightly each hand. The doors close slowly behind him with a heavy thud, and her eyes finally begin adjusting to the light.

At the far end of the room, an adult’s voice orders them into a line. The room’s too small for a real queue but they manage to form an organized cluster, shuffling slowly towards the far end of the room that becomes a better lineup as the crowd thins.

She’s not sure how long they wait, but the other children are growing impatient. Their voices grow louder and plaintiff as they begin to move restlessly, but she stands as still as she can, quiet and patient, until she’s close enough to see what’s going on at the end of the line.

There are a few adults seated behind a table. One by one, the children approach, stand there briefly, then are directed down one of the hallways.

The boy behind her has been whining for a long time now. She’s tempted to turn around and tell him that a ninja can’t act that way, but she doesn’t. It isn’t her place. She’s to be as good and obedient as she can, and let the instructors correct any unwanted behaviour in herself, and in the others.

Finally she steps in front of the assembled shinobi. There are two men, and one woman, chunin by the looks of them, and they scrutinize her for a moment. Mouth quirked distastefully, the woman’s eyes pass over her and she gestures for her to take the nearest hallway. “Find the line, and wait,” she tells her, before calling loudly for the next student, and Kotone proceeds down the hall.

It’s dark, and narrow, the same craggy stone walls and smooth floor. Lined up along the edge of the corridor is another string of children, all in some state of disrepair, some even as dirty and tattered as she is, and she sits, rests against her knees. Every so often a man pops into the hall from a door at the head of the line and beckons another child. It takes her a moment to recognize him as a medic-nin.

She follows him into the room when it’s her turn, the harsh fluorescent light sudden and piercing. She flinches, does her best to follow him, into another little room off the first larger one, while fighting her eyes back open. He disappears, and a woman in pink scrubs enters. She introduces herself, not unkindly (which is how Kotone recognizes her as a civilian nurse) and asks her to sit in a chair.

The nurse pulls on gloves and a paper mask before checking her over, handles her like she’s something toxic. With a comb, she picks through the knotted hair closest to her scalp in search of any parasites she could pass on to other students. It takes a long time, and a lot of pulling, but the girl stays quiet, just lets the feeling wash over her and ebb away like she’s been taught.

Having found nothing in her clothes or her hair, she calls the medic-nin back into the room.

He orders her out of her filthy clothes, so she undresses. Kotone bites her lip as her sweater hits the floor with a wet thump (if she’d known there were going to leave him there she should have let him keep it…). She’s measured, then weighed. The doctor hums to himself as though displeased, and she’s afraid she’s done something wrong, but he just orders her to sit on an odd little table covered in paper, so she sits still as he listens to her heart, her lungs, then she watches, unflinching, as he draws her blood into a little vial.

Soaked in seaspray her clothes have absorbed the cold from the stone floor, and she shivers when she pulls them back on. The medic-nin shoos her away with quick directions to the storerooms, the girls changing rooms, and finally the first-year students’ dormitory.

She wanders away, repeating the pattern of lefts and rights to herself until she finds her destination and approaches the chunin dozing in his seat near a closed door marked ‘storage’ and a stack of cardboard boxes.

He starts when she approaches him, and nearly falls out of his seat. The man recovers quickly and fixes her with an unfriendly glare as he studies her for a moment. “Ehh… Probably a small,” he mutters and drags himself towards the far end of the stack with a heavy sigh.

“I’m just here to deal with the yearly influx of fresh meat,” he tells her accusingly as he shoves one of the boxes into her hands. “Extra medical staff, too. It’s usually damn near empty. We’ve all got better things to be doing, you know.”

“Thank you, sir,” is all she says, politely, as she accepts the package of supplies and this seems to disappoint him. Oh. Had he been trying to upset her? Maybe she should act upset for him. But the moment’s passed and she’s been standing there for a bit too long, so she excuses herself and starts back down the hallway clutching the box to her chest. It’s light but she can hear fabric brushing against fabric as she moves. She grips it tighter.

Kotone doesn’t open the box until she’s reached the locker room and finds it to be empty. It’s small, with no actual lockers to speak of, but there are a few benches spaced out along the walls and across the floor and she can see the showers around a corner to the back and bathroom stalls to the other side. Despite the complete solitude, she doesn’t feel safe lifting the lid off of her supplies until she’s tucked herself into a corner, taking one last cautious glance over her shoulder for would-be thieves.

Sitting on top of a pile of black cloth are a pair of black sandals. She reaches for them and stops suddenly at the sight of her own grubby hands. Reluctantly the girl decides to shower before she leaves filthy handprints on the new, **_clean_** , clothes that she still can’t believe are really hers.

Though, they aren’t, really. She belongs to the village, like the clothes belong to the village, and even if they’ve been allotted to her she doesn’t own them anymore than the sandals own them. Still, these are the ones she’s been given to take care of, so the tucks the box under a bench for safekeeping before shedding her waterlogged rags again and padding towards the showers.

There are a few showers protruding from the tiled wall, and she makes her way to the farthest one in some futile hope of keeping an eye on her things from around the corner. The pressure beats down on her back like a hailstorm but the water is almost warm and it’s been such a long time since she’s felt clean that she doesn’t mind at all.

There are a few soap dispensers set into the wall and she sets to scrubbing the dirt from her skin, under her nails, and then carefully trying to separate her only elastic bands from the tangled disaster of her hair. Kotone had contemplated cutting it all off at the first opportunity but she remembers how it had kept her ears warm, and considers the constant maintenance it would take to keep it out of her eyes while too short to tie back. She grits her teeth and works her fingers into the mats, pulling and tugging, and the shampoo gives her more success than she’s had in a long time, but it’s not until long after the water’s run cold and her teeth are chattering that her hair finally feels clean again.

Shivering, she wrings out her less-knotted hair and carefully examines the contents of the box. She carefully removes the sandals, and sets them down on the bench, examining and carefully placing each item in turn. She finds two identical black shirts, two identical pairs of dark grey pants with lots of pockets, several identical pairs of underwear, and one very familiar black sweater. There’s also a single white towel and she hurriedly sets to drying her dripping hair. A few more items rattle around in the bottom of the box. Something she recognizes as a shuriken holster, a small black digital watch, two notebooks and two pens, a hairbrush and a toothbrush with a tube of toothpaste. There’s a little typed note stuck at the bottom encouraging them to keep their bodies and teeth clean and in good health (in order to be as valuable as possible to the academy and cause the least possible drain on medical resources) as well as instructions for requisitioning of supplies (stressing that all requests must be approved by an instructor and that replacements will only be provided with good reason).

She dresses, carefully packs the rest away in the box, and dumps her old things in the garbage on the way out. They aren’t standard-issue, so she couldn’t keep them even if they weren’t threadbare and full of holes, but still, maybe, she stares at them a little longer than absolutely necessary before letting them fall to the bottom of the bin.

“That was a good jacket,” she muses, and before she realizes her mistake, she glances over her shoulder for the response of someone who isn’t there.

/ / / /

 

Kotone finds the dormitory easily enough, both walls lined with bunk beds (fifty per wall, she’d imagine) and most have already been filled. She wanders, eyes passing over the other faces as quickly as she can manage, until she spots an unoccupied bottom bunk just a few beds from the far end of the room. There’s already a box slipped underneath, and hers would fit beside it. First, though, she sets it down on the thin grey sheets and pulls out the pen, and a shirt. She’ll mark the things she’s wearing now the next time she changes. Something creaks above her just as she sets to work, and she looks up as a shadow falls across her bed.

It’s a boy, hanging over the top bunk so he’s looking at her upside down, and he’s grinning brightly. There’s healthy colour in his cheeks and the wavy chestnut curls (that seem like they’d be spilling over his face if he were righted) are glossy and neat. He looks well cared for, and strong.

“Hi!” he chirps. “I’m Nezumi Hatsuka, what’s your name?”

Kotone ignores him, and ignores it when he leans even more dangerously over the edge to peer at the name she’s writing on the shirt’s tag.

“’Ume,’ huh? Nice to meet you, Ume-chan.”

“I don’t want to talk to you,” she tells him firmly, determined to keep her gaze on the far wall.

“Huh,” he sounds hurt. “Was it something I said? I didn’t make you angry or something did I? I don’t think we’ve even met before.”

“I don’t want to talk to anyone.”

“Ooooh,” the boy sighs as if relieved, and then laughs to himself. “So your parents are ninja too, huh? Yeah, I got that. ‘Focus on your training,’ and ‘you aren’t here to make friends,’ right?” He puts on a strange voice, and she gets the feeling that he’s imitating one of his parents. She supposes it must be funnier if you know the person being mimicked, because he lets out another easy chuckle at his own joke. “See, what I figure, is we’re all going to be working together one day, so why not start now? Don’t you think so?”

She doesn’t know what she thinks. It isn’t her place to question the orders she’s given, just to follow them, so she just grabs another shirt, then the pants, and keeps labelling things without looking up until she hears him sigh and pull himself back up onto his bunk.

When everything not currently on her person has been safely marked with her name, she returns everything but the hairbrush. It’s better, but the brush still gets stuck almost instantly. There’s a ripping sound as a few individual strands snap, but she presses on, breathing deeply whenever a particularly tight tug sends a jolt through her. Her father has taught her all about pain— just little messages from her brain, to let her know something had happened. It wasn’t real, just a fabrication of her own mind, and if her brain had made it then her brain could dismiss it, too. He’d given her lots of practice, and she was sure to need even more now. Receive the message, understand what it was trying to tell her, put it from her thoughts.

For an entire stroke, she feels the plastic bristles against her head, then down her neck, passing uninterrupted. Soon she can’t find any knots at all, and falls back onto her pillow with a contented sigh.

She was clean, and warm, and her hair was finally tidy— she had clothes, and a **_bed_**. And, most importantly, she was doing what she was always meant for; what she had been born to do.

So why does she have that heavy, sick feeling she only gets when she’s done something wrong? She’s almost certain she’s done everything she was supposed to… though engaging the Nezumi boy at all was a bit of a hiccup, and she should know better. Was that it?

The girl lets out another slow breath and wriggles under the sheets, shuts her eyes and tries to will herself to sleep. It isn’t long before she feels herself drifting off.

Zabuza should be here.

It’s dangerously close to an opinion, but she’s too drowsy to scold herself. After all, it’s an objective fact that he would be an excellent ninja, and it’s her responsibility to want what’s best for the village, so it’s an alright thing to think, maybe, that he should be one. She snuggles deeper into her sheets, her pillow, and something inside her sinks. He’ll be alright, though, won’t he? He’s clever, and sneaky, and he’s been able to feed them both for so long it should be easy finding enough for himself, now, right? Besides, Zabuza was the kind of person who wanted things, and this is what he had wanted, so everything’s the way it should be.

Take the feeling, and discard it.

But this isn’t like pain. She understands pain, knows what it is, what it wants, where it comes from.

This is something different and she isn’t sure what to do with it, so she just lets it sit there in the pit of her stomach and calls it ‘nothing.’

/ / / /

The chunin from the day before charges into the room, and with a flick of a switch the fluorescent lights sputter to life. A massive groan rises from the lines of bunks as nearly two-hundred children roll into their pillows and shield their eyes. The few still dozing wake soon, as he charges down the aisle and barks orders. In the future, he warns them, it will be up to them to get up in time; if the kitchen closes before they’ve eaten they’ll just have to go hungry.

There’s a moment of panic when she wakes, but after the initial shock she takes in the bed, the sheets, the man thundering past, and Kotone remembers where she is, and what she’s doing here, and why there’s only empty space beside her.

Waking has always been a weakness of hers. It’s the way in which she had most frequently disappointed her father, but it’s hard to be disciplined when she’s less than half awake and her brain isn’t really working yet. On the street or in their little cramped hideaways she’d woken quickly if only because (cold, and exposed and vulnerable) she’d been unable to sleep this soundly, but her bed was warm and safe and she slowly pushes herself up, groggy, and rubs at her bleary eyes.  


The chunin is ordering them all to follow him to the mess hall, arms crossed impatiently across his chest as he waits for his school of new students to gather by the door, and as she finally pulls on her sandals and trots to the line, she’s glad to see that she’s still among the first to do so. They gather behind her, some red-eyed, and dazed, and clearly unable to sleep the night before, but soon they’ve all wandered over and he leads them down the hallway.

Someone from the middle of the school breaks away and drifts over towards her, and she has a pretty good idea who it is. Kotone resists the instinctual urge to flick her gaze over towards him, as she’s sure he’d take that as a sign of encouragement. Even keeping her attention on the back of the chunin’s thistle-coloured jacket, she can see him out of the corner of her eye, all sleep-tousled brown curls and a bouncing gait.

“Morning, Ume-chan.”

The only sign that she’s heard him is the sudden rigid set of her shoulders, and when she manages to remain unresponsive as he waves a hand in front of her face, Hatsuka finally gives up and falls back into the crowd. She can hear him chatting the whole way, to anyone and everyone that will acknowledge him, sharing names and stories and various reactions to their new lives.

The mess hall is a large, open space, with rows of long tables and benches. Just as they enter, there are a number of wheeled towers of racks, an identical tray slotted into each, and the far side of the room has already filled with slightly older children, each with one of those trays laid out in front of them. They pick at their food and some eye them slyly. Some smirk to one another as they assess the gaggle of bewildered first years, but most quickly lose interest and return to their breakfasts. The blond chunin stands by the door and shoos them in, ordering each to take a tray and fill out the tables closest to him.

She takes a tray, then takes a seat, and stares down at the meal. In front of her, like everyone else, is a pair of plastic chopsticks, a glass of water, a bowl of rice with raw egg, a bowl of miso soup, and a chunk of mackerel, all lukewarm. The portions of each are small, but all together it’s more food than Kotone has seen in a long time.

It isn’t spoiled, and the smell alone is enough to make her mouth water and her empty belly growl; but for some reason, just looking at it is enough to make her stomach churn.

“ **Alright**!”

The chunin’s voice reverberates off the walls, and a boy beside her, that had immediately begun to wolf down his food, is startled and sputters as he inhales a mouthful of rice. The chunin paces the room, up and down the length of the tables, taking stock of the children assembled before him.

“So, here’s how this is going to work,” he begins. His voice is still strong, and forceful, but he has their attention now, and projects rather than shouting. “You’re going to get your asses down here every morning after six, and before seven. Seven AM, we lock those doors,” he makes a sweeping gesture towards the entrance they’d used. “You’ve got until seven forty-five to eat, and then you get booted out of here. Your first class starts at eight, on the dot. You’ve all got watches, so you’d all better get your carcasses wherever it is you need to be, on time. So, shower, get dressed, take a piss, do whatever the hell you have to, but do it on your own damn time. At eight, you’re ours.”

“Your last class of the day will end at six PM. Kitchens open again at six, until seven forty five, and you get fed again. Same deal— **_except_** ,” he stops abruptly and whips something from his pocket. It’s a small square of blue paper, and he holds it up for them to see. “ ** _THIS_** is a meal voucher. We feed you in the morning because we’re just that nice, but if you want to get into this mess hall for dinner, you’re going to need to earn it. You will be given one of these by your first class’ teacher every morning. You will keep this on your person at **_all times_**. If you misbehave, if you speak out of turn, if you disrupt class, if you are **_late,_** if you give an answer that is **_too stupid for words_** , if you ask a **_question_** that is too stupid for words, if your performance is unsatisfactory, or if you just plain piss off anybody wearing one of these,” he jabs his thumb towards his forehead protector. “Guess what happens to your fucking chit?”

Someone on the second year side of the room is snickering, but otherwise a deadly silence has passed over the children. She doesn’t want to divert any of her attention from the chunin, but she can see in her peripheral vision that the boy beside her (still wheezing a little) has gone pale and wide-eyed.

“Every year, some little smartass thinks he can game the system by telling his teacher that his voucher’s ‘already been torn up’. You want to try lying to a fucking journeyman ninja, you go right ahead; see how that works out for you.” He’s stopped pacing now, and just lets his eyes rove over them, seemingly pleased by the terror palpable in the air. “If you do make a nuisance of yourself after having your voucher taken, we’ll punish you even more severely. You’ll notice that these chits have a date. They’re only good the day you get them, we do check, so don’t you dare try hoarding them until you feel like eating. While there is a date, there is **_no name_** on your voucher, so…” a wicked grin pulls at his lips. “Hang on to them carefully. If you were to **_lose_** it, anyone could just… take it.”

“Two final notes. One: the third year students have their own wing of the building. Doors to the third year wing are clearly labeled as such. First and second year students are absolutely **_prohibited_** from any such area. And last: from six PM onwards is free time. Eat, study, train, do whatever, but remember: nobody leaves the woods around the academy, and we lock the outside doors at ten PM. If you aren’t back by then, you sleep outside. If you aren’t waiting outside when we open them again in the morning…. We will hunt you down, and we will drag you back here. You belong to us, now. Try to run, and we will make your life **_so_** much harder than it was already.”    

He gives them one last hard, disapproving look before throwing them a dismissive wave of his hand and stalking off. Kotone takes this as permission to eat, and hesitantly takes a mouthful of now-cold tamago-kake. She’s full after a few bites of the rice, but there’s so much food and it’s fresh and clean and she can’t bear to waste it, some base, instinctive part of her not quite believing she’ll ever get an opportunity like this again. So she eats it all despite the way her stomach protests, tries to will away the feeling rising in her throat.

Kotone is sick into the nearest trashcan a few minutes later. She isn’t the only one.

 

////

 

Four more chunin shove open the mess hall doors and loiter, clipboards in hand. She recognizes the three from the table when she’d first been admitted (the short kunoichi with bobbed red hair, a sturdy looking man with steely grey hair and eyes, and a much younger man in his late teens with short black hair and eyebrow rings), and the chunin who had given her the box of supplies, still looking drowsy and leaning heavily against the wall.

At seven forty-five the blond demands their attention again, and explains that they’re to be split into five groups based on their first class of the day, and that those groups would then rotate between subjects. The red-haired woman steps forward and immediately begins to list names (for Class 1: Ninjutsu and Genjutsu) children scrambling to line up before her, many rushing back to grab their forgotten trays and shove them back onto the racks when she shoots them a pointed look and mutters something disparaging.    

The younger man with the piercings seems less sure of himself, but studies his own roster and another forty children soon rush towards him. Class 2, he tells them, is “life skills.”

Reluctantly the other man shoves a shock of teal hair from his eyes, and reads out the names for Class 3: Shinobi History and Theory.

Kotone shifts in her seat a little as the man with the grey eyes clears his throat. She’ll do whatever they ask of her, and after all it’s taijutsu, her favourite, but she would really, really, really rather not be—

“Class four: Ume Kotone—”

It’s a silly thing to be worried about. So silly. And she tells herself this as she grabs her empty dishes and hastens to the front of the room to put them away and then get into the line. She’s going to be a ninja now, and there’s no place in her heart for anything as stupid as superstition because—

The next name he calls is Nezumi Hatsuka.

Thirty seconds in class four, and already she’s having bad luck.

////

Today, their instructor informs them, would be largely an orientation. Every morning at eight, class four was to meet at the training fields outside to warm up, then they were to proceed to the room set aside for them indoors, with mats, and bags and dummies to hit.

He doesn’t bother to introduce himself, just leads them outside and orders them to the track, a wide ring cleared of snow and slush, and assigns laps until told to stop. He watches with a critical eye, carefully, taking stock of their ability. He doesn’t seem particularly impressed.

Kotone, for a moment, heads the pack and takes off as fast as she can; but almost immediately, she’s overtaken by Hatsuka, and other bigger, stronger children with sturdy bodies and food in their stomachs. She finds herself in the middle and has to dig for the strength to keep from drifting to the back. She’s running on fumes, but is fueled by the creeping sense of failure clutching at her heart whenever another child pulls ahead.  

 

It’s chilly, and a strong wind passes effortlessly through the thin fabric of their clothes. “If you’re cold,” their teacher calls when a few children have bunched by the side of the path, huddle together, “run more.” They look back at him timidly, one starting a halfhearted jog and the chunin takes a few menacing steps towards them. “I said **_move_**.”  

They run in earnest, meeting the tail end of the loosely gathered flock.

The cluster soon pulls apart though, more distance between them as some lose their pace and other gain their second wind. That cold feeling settles in the pit of her stomach more intensely Hatsuka pulls in front of her **_again_** , an entire lap ahead. She grits her teeth and forces her feet faster, because it’s her body, controlled by her brain, and she can make it do whatever it has to.

The visible puffs of her breath become ragged and uneven as she presses on, matching the boy’s pace, her breathing passing with a ragged, laboured shudder.

“Woah! Hey, hey, easy!” he says, glancing over. His voice is stable, and strong. This is nothing to him. She had been that fast once, hadn’t she? She can’t be sure, but she swears to herself that she will be again. That fast and then more. “It’s actually Kotone, right? Kotone, that’s… that’s not a good sound. Let up a bit; you’re going to hurt yourself.”  

She ignores him, drives herself onwards despite the burning in her lungs and the growing trembling in her gait. It’s just as she falters that something seizes her by the shoulder, steadying her, and it’s Hatsuka, seemingly undeterred by the fact that she’s completely unresponsive. He’s hard to understand over the pounding of her heart and a sound she realizes is her own gasping breath, but he’s letting her know that the run’s over, and sure enough, the children around her have stopped, and are making their way back towards the academy.

A deep ache has settled into her by the time she joins the other children to sit, cross-legged, on the padded floor of the training room, but she’s at least caught her breath. The steely-eyed man stands before them, and it’s all so wonderfully familiar. Their teacher explains taijutsu, how to make a fist properly, and when he lines them up and shoves each in turn, she’s ready. It’s forceful, and her limbs feel leaded, but breaking a fall properly is such second-nature now that she catches herself, just as he’d shown them, just as her father had shown her, on reflex alone.

He nods approvingly.

Kotone’s heart feels lighter.

/ / / /

 

Class five is weapons, and they follow after the blond chunin like a line of ducklings when he comes to retrieve them. Like taijutsu, weapons training will be done both inside and out, and it’s as he’s leading them to the targets set up outside that it happens.

Up the narrow trail from the academy to the surface, an abrupt, startled cry cuts over the sound of crashing waves and Kotone turns just in time to see a boy tumble over the edge.

He’d slipped on a patch of ice, sliding backwards down the steep incline, windmilling his arms in a frantic attempt to stop his downwards momentum, and then he was gone.

There’s a moment of stunned silence, and then the girl that had been standing closest to him starts screaming, eyes wild and desperate as she creeps as close to the drop as she can to peer down, calling after him again and again. Kotone watches her, curiously, as the shrieking devolves into hiccupping sobs and the only other girl in their class rushes forward to rest her hand on the other’s shoulder, her own face drained of colour and set in wide-eyed terror.

“M…maybe he’s alright….” she tells the first girl, voice hollow and stunned.

“I don’t see him!” The first one is still hyperventilating. She’s small, brown haired and green eyed, her friend taller, and rounder, and blonde. Kotone tries not to take in any more information than she needs too, tries not to see them, just observe. Over the course of the previous class she had begun to recognize her classmates. Not as friends or people, but passively, without any sentiment or thought attached to them, as one recalls anything they see often enough.

She doesn’t hear the weapons instructor trudge back down the path, but he appears behind her, arms crossed irritably across his flak jacket, and cuffs the crying girl across the back of the head with enough force to throw her into her friend, and send both tumbling to the ground.

He leans away and glances down over the cliff side with a dispassionate raise of his eyebrow, searches for a moment, and then turns back to them. “Everyone watch your step. And **_you_** ,” he rounds on the two girls again, narrowing his eyes at the smaller of them. “Are you quite done?”

Her response is a tiny nod, but her face is red and she’s fighting to keep it from pulling back into a grimace. It does anyway, her next breath coming out as a squeak, and under his wrathful gaze, she can’t help but burst into tears again.

He makes a show of tearing her meal voucher into tiny pieces and letting them drift to the frigid water below.

The blond chunin introduces them to shuriken and kunai (both curved and straight) when they reach the training field. He shows them how to hold them, how to care for them, how to store them safely in the kunai holsters many of them hadn’t known to wear that morning, and Kotone absorbs it all with rapt attention. She can’t help but notice the other children, though, and the few she recognizes as being nearest to the accident still look dazed. Many are oblivious, but she can tell the ones who’ve heard what’s happened second-hand, as they look uneasy and keep glancing back at the witnesses.

The green-eyed girl is pale, and shaking, her eyes distant as she mechanically follows the motions of drawing her weapon, readying it as he’d shown them, then holstering it. The other girl is still close by her side, drawn together by fear. She rests a hand on her shoulder, steadying her, or gently nudging the other back to the present when she retreats inside herself, eyes vacant.

Kotone’s eyes keep falling on the two of them in passing, like she can will them apart with her mind before their teacher steps in to do it himself; however, as the class progresses, it never happens.

He’s definitely noticed them, noted their behaviour, but says nothing.

She returns to seeing how many shuriken she can stack, properly so they can be easily accessed and don’t catch on the fabric, into the holster, and repeats her father’s instructions in her mind like a mantra: it isn’t any of her business; the other children are not her concern, do not exist.

She ignores them when the red-haired kunoichi appears to lead them farther from the academy and down to a training field curving around the edge of a pond. This, she tells them, is where they’ll learn real ninjutsu. For today, they’re herded back inside and to another training room much like the other.

They’re ordered to sit as she explains, as simply as she can, what ninjutsu and genjutsu entail, seemingly unperturbed when half the class seems completely baffled. The rest of the class is spent sitting, completely still, as they’re meant to find their chakra inside of themselves. Not the energy they use to run, or move, the kunoichi insists, but something separate, something malleable and fluid, a reservoir of energy that most of them had yet to tap.

She’d only begun to work on molding chakra when her father had died. She understood the concept, but Kotone had never been sure that she’d ever really found it— there was so much inside of her, she’d had difficulty sorting out what might be chakra and what was just meaningless white noise. He’d shown her the transformation technique only the day before he left for **_that,_** final, mission, and though she thought she may have felt a flicker of something, she’d never managed to do it.

Kotone tries to level her breathing, still herself inside as well as out, but it’s a long time to be sitting still for many of her untrained classmates and she can hear them shifting. She’s sure she could shut them out if only she found something to focus on, but she’s no closer to finding it at the end of the class than she had been months before, maybe even further from it.

There’s a dull thud as someone at the back of the room jumps, and a scrape as he sprawls backwards against the mats. When she opens her eyes, their instructor is smirking, and following her gaze she finds Hatsuka blinking at the kunoichi in alarm.

“I just molded a great deal of chakra at once,” the woman explains, seemingly amused, to the assembled students. “It seems we have a sensor type in our class. Your family must be pleased?”

The boy shrugs, a little sheepish grin pulling at his mouth.

Their next teacher fetches them just as the others had, and they stream back to the dormitories to retrieve their notebooks and pens before being shown to the life-skills classroom. Hatsuka catches up to her again in the hallway, seemingly used to her indifference because he just starts talking at her, bold as anything, whether she acknowledges his presence or not.

“Hey, so,” he starts cautiously. “You were nowhere near it, but you’ve definitely got some. Not a whole lot, really, so I think you’ll have an easier time of it when you get your— you’re the one that barfed this morning, right?— once you get your strength up and there’s more to feel out—”

She picks up her pace, hoping to lose him in the crowd of children moving through the hallway, but he grabs her arm again and she stops dead. “Hey, I just… you look lonely, ok? Let’s be friends.” Slowly, she turns towards the boy, and says nothing— just looks through him, pale eyes empty and cold, until slowly he releases his grip on her and reluctantly sinks back into the stream of bodies.  

He’s left, but she still feels as though something’s wrong. There’s a familiar instant where she thinks she may call out to him, but this time she bites it back and it dies in her throat. The girl clutches her books tighter to her chest, and reassures herself that she’d done what she was supposed to do.

Life skills is exercises in reading and writing that day, and history is a brief overview of the Five Great Nations and the neutral countries between them that are of particular importance to Kirigakure. Its all familiar to her but it’s the first some of her classmates have seen of either.

When they’re released for the evening she delivers her notes back to her room and then proceeds to the mess hall again. Her stomach’s gnawing on itself, but she’s going to be more careful this time, eat only as much as she can handle.

A fight’s broken out in the hallway, two boys grappling untidily on the floor, presumably over the blue scrap of paper that’s fallen to the ground between them. The sleepy-looking chunin just raises an eyebrow in passing and steps over them on his way to dinner, and they continue trying to maim each other, uninterrupted. They’re so invested in their spat that they don’t even notice when someone smaller, and quicker, darts by and the chit disappears.

She never actually sees what he does with it, but Nezumi Hatsuka is seated with both of the other girls in their class that evening.

/ / / /

She’s among the few that venture outside that night.

The woods are sparse by the school but grow larger and closer as she presses on, keeping a careful eye on her watch. She wants to find someplace quiet to train and study, somewhere she won’t be disturbed or found, but not outside their allowed range or such that she might be late getting back at night.

She wanders as far as the ground will allow her, falling away into a steep drop straight into the ocean below. She seems to have found the place where the cliff cuts around the forest, and far below down the coast she thinks she can see the lights of the prohibited fishing village. She follows the edge of the forest until she can get a better look at the little gathering of buildings (some with lit windows and a plume of smoke rising from the chimney), and docks with small fishing boats bobbing in the waves. It’s close enough to be interesting to look at, but far enough that she’s confident that she’s still well within the rules.

There’s a decent clearing here, and she studies it as she sits herself on an overturned log laid out flat like a bench. She soon spots a battered target pinned to a birch, and her suspicions that this had been someone else’s place before are confirmed. It’s isolated, and more than enough room to train, with easy access to water whenever she gets to learning suiton techniques, and the sheer drop into the unforgiving, rocky, surf doesn’t scare her at all.

She closes her eyes and takes in the sound of the place, the stillness except the crashing of waves and cries of diving birds. She feels the same kind of stillness settle into her as she’d once felt tucked away beneath a stairwell, secure and at ease.

It’s perfect, and for the next few years it will be hers.

When she settles into her bunk for the night, brushing through her clean, damp hair as she had the day before, someone’s sobbing towards the front of the room. As she drifts off she realizes that there are quite a few children crying into their pillows, some trying to hide it, others weeping shamelessly.

She knows what it is, of course, what it looks like, but she doesn’t really understand it anymore than she understands what makes people smile without having to think about it, or double over laughing.

She knows babies cry, but her father had explained it to her: that babies are helpless and cry as a way to garner attention, and sympathy, and care, and that as a person learns to speak and take care of themselves there’s no longer any need.

She’s grown out of it and can’t remember anything different.

Her father had been careful not to let her near any distractions, but still they found ways to intrude into her training. She’d caught sight of a doll in a shop window once, and once she’d watched inquisitively as two children chased one another down the street, shrieking but in a way they seemed to enjoy. Her father had pulled her away firmly on both occasions, for the same reason.

She was going to be a shinobi; these things were not meant for her.

 

/ / / /

 

The teachers don’t bother introducing themselves, she realizes, because they stay only two weeks at a time. They never ask questions, or really offer feedback. They just stick to the lessons as they’ve been plotted out, so there’s no room for confusion when they switch off for a completely new staff twice a month.

December has never been her favourite time of year, and she finds that if she works hard enough, and buries herself in her studies and her training in her little clearing by the sea, and never leaves herself any room for other thoughts, she can almost ignore her sixth birthday’s approach. She’s close, but their new life-skills teacher, who’s moved on to more complicated writing and basic mathematics, had decided that December thirteenth, of all days, was a good day to address the clock and calendar as a subject of study.

Birthdays seem to be something her classmates find entertaining. They announce them proudly, clap each other on the back and tear sheets out of their notebooks for makeshift cards, but her mother had died bringing her into the world, and Kotone sees nothing in that worth celebrating.

Slowly, she’s able to keep food down and it isn’t long after that she can feel her strength returning to her. Taijutsu is still her strongest subject, followed by weapons and she always performs satisfactorily in tests in her two classroom subjects. Ninjutsu, however, continues to elude her. She understands theory, she’s learned the handseals and can switch through them at an acceptable speed for a beginner, but nothing ever comes of it. She’s hardly the only one in her class that has yet to successfully access their chakra system but still she braces herself whenever an instructor’s attention passes to her. Kotone readies and apology and her meal chit, but it seems that as long as she doesn’t cause trouble she won’t be punished, and that they aren’t particularly concerned with her success one way or another.

Hatsuka never attempted to interact with her after that first day, she’s relieved to find. Upon closer observation of her year she notes a few others that keep to themselves as she does, children of ninja who’ve been given the same proprieties as she has. She tries to sit with them whenever she can, as they always ignore her just as she ignores them, and it’s a comfortable kind of mutual insignificance.

Every so often there’s another empty bunk in their dormitory. She knows one boy stayed out too late and froze to death overnight, and heard something about an accident with a badly handled kunai, but it’s becoming more commonplace and there’s no longer any panic or grieving when another of their number disappears. The loss of young lives, and the hardship of their training has bonded some of them and she sees the same sets of people clinging to one another in the hallway and the mess and in class, together as consistently as she is alone. Always, they’re just noted and ignored by the supervising instructors. She watches them sometimes, just taking in their behaviour. Sometimes when she’s alone she tries to emulate it, but she’s sure it looks forced and unnatural.

The snow’s been packed down tight by her footsteps across her clearing, day after day, making a ring of hard packed surface amid the wet slush settled over everything. By the beginning of January the sun sets in the afternoon and it’s always completely dark by the time she can reach her safe haven and practice alone.

This time the girl’s focusing on the target left by her predecessor. They’re finally being trusted with their own few shuriken and a single kunai, and it’s the knife she practices throwing over, and over, retrieving it and then moving back further before throwing again. It’s heavy, and uneven and it takes practice to send it straight without it whipping end over end in midair.

A sound catches her attention just as the weapon leaves her hand and it strikes deep into the wood above the target as she forgets it in her haste to turn. No one has ever bothered her here before, and though it was slight, she had definitely heard the sound of footfalls on icy snow.

She can make out the silhouette of another child against the lights from the village, a boy she thinks, and she narrows her eyes, squares her shoulders and turns away determined not to make the same mistake now that she had with Hatsuka, and never respond to his presence at all. Eventually he’d move on, and if he tried to take her training spot from her, she simply wouldn’t leave. The other child doesn’t budge and neither does she.

“Well,” he says after a long silence, “if **_that’s_** how you’re going to be, never mind.”

The girl’s eyes snap open and her shoulders drop at the sound of his voice. Slowly, cautiously, she turns and creeps closer until she can make out his face in the darkness.

He doesn’t look the way she remembers. He’s still scrawny and angular, but without the sickly hollow cheeks or the unnaturally sharp outline of his collarbones. She can’t see much of him at all really, and though the clothes are simple and worn, they look clean and warm. His hair’s shorter, uneven now in different ways, since it’s not matted hair sticking out as it is rough short patches where it looks like he’d hacked the unsalvageable bits away with a knife. His eyes are the same, though, sharp and clear and intent.

Before she knows what she’s doing, she rushes forward and throws her arms around his shoulders, pulls him in tight. It’s something she’s seen other children do, especially the inseparable girls in her class, as way of greeting, and this seems to be the right context. She knows what a genjutsu is, knows that when something completely impossible happens it should be her first instinct. But how could anyone know to throw this at her? And if they did, if they’d pulled him from her memories, wouldn’t he look the way she’d seen him last?

The boy’s posture has gone completely rigid as he freezes, stock-still in her grasp, but despite the tension, he doesn’t push her away.

Kotone pulls back, though she maybe forgets to let go completely as her hands stay on his shoulders. “Zabuza,” she breathes, quietly, as soon as she finds her voice again. “You’re **_here_**.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big thank you to anyone reading <3 Going to update every so often until I have what's been completed posted, and then it'll be a while between chapters as it's uploaded as it's written.


	3. Chapter 3

Momochi Zabuza has absolutely no intention of going anywhere with that jackass or his cart.

He’s not sure if he’s getting better at reading the little flickers across her face, or if he’s just been staring at nothing so long that he’s beginning to infer tiny expressions where there is none, but when he considers her offer, he swears he sees something in Kotone’s eyes light up. She bounds over to the strange man, and that’s when he makes his getaway.

He presses himself flat against the grimy brick of the alley, and waits for the cart to roll away.

He furrows his brow at the guilt bubbling in his gut at the thought of her hopeful expression, and tries to smother it before it coaxes him out of hiding. After all, she’s abandoning **_him_** , if anything. He’d offered to let her stay, but she’d chosen The Academy instead. Like she should, really— after all, it’s warmth and food and a future. She herself had tried to tempt him along with those things, but he isn’t about to resign himself to being **_owned_** , not for a bed, or a meal, or anything. It was selfish to expect her to turn that down for a life of scrounging and freedom with him, but he’s never claimed to be altruistic.

Deep down, he knew that theirs was always a temporary arrangement, and now it has come to an end. Zabuza owes her nothing, and he’s already learned all that he had wanted from her. Sure, he’s alone, but objectively, with her skills but without the girl herself, he has all the advantages of their partnership without any of the extra work, or the annoyance of her constant company. Really, he should be relieved.

But then she starts to call for him.

He closes his eyes and resolutely sets to ignoring her, though there’s an almost-frantic note in her voice that he has a hard time reconciling with her usual state of complete apathy. Her cries, he can resist. It’s the sound’s abrupt stop that draws him out of the alley.

Reflexively, he peeks out from around the corner, and in a moment of dizzying stupidity, before he can stop himself, he’s halfway to the cart.

Kotone is dangling, lifelessly, in the ninja’s grasp—and there’s an awful moment where Zabuza thinks that the man may have broken her neck—but her eyes flutter for a moment before she seems to lose consciousness again. The ninja— what she’d explained as a ‘chunin’ by the looks of him—scoops her up like a ragdoll and lets her fall to the cart with a thud. That’s when the blond man turns, and finally notices the other street urchin stopped hesitantly in front of him, his expression fixed somewhere between terror and blinding rage. The chunin’s lip curls in disgust and he steps away from the cart to loom over the boy, eyes passing over him, up and down, distastefully.

“Ugh. So you’re her little friend, are you?” he sneers. “Relax, I’m not about to damage the livestock. Wouldn’t do to turn up short, now, would it?”

He should turn, and run, but his indignation’s giving rise to fury and it’s making him reckless. Instead he can feel his mouth twitching into half-formed words, and what finally comes out, is “Give her back.”

The chunin finds this hilarious, an incredulous bubble of mocking laughter passing into the air with a puff of vapour. He doesn’t kick him, just sort of presses the flat of his foot to the boy’s chest and shoves him backwards into the slush, as though he isn’t worth the energy for anything more.

“Then take me with you,” he hisses up at the chunin.

“Kid,” the man tells him, “You can’t appreciate this, but I’m doing you a fucking favour, here.” Zabuza glares up at him, but he just narrows his eyes in return. “Who knows? Maybe you won’t freeze to death over the winter. Probably will, but it’s a better chance than you’ve got with this lot,” he taunts, voice low so the children on the cart can’t hear him. “So go back to your gutter, and count yourself lucky, you miserable little wretch.”

With that, the chunin leaves him, soaked in the street’s wet, dingy snow, and shivering, watching with gritted teeth as the cart peels away and disappears.

Slowly, his heart, hammering away in his rib cage, slows to a normal rhythm. He drags himself to his feet, head still reeling, and more than a little apprehensive of whatever it was that had possessed him to do anything so rash. He knows better than to get into a fight he can’t win… especially over something of such little importance.

Still, there’s this feeling, heavy in his chest, like something’s been stolen from him.

There’s a busier street through the alleyway, so he passes through and disappears into the crowd. He slips silently between the busied shoppers, lifting a few ryo from the pocket of a man engrossed in a window display, manages to ease an entire wallet out of another’s bag, ghostly quiet and invisible. After a long day of thieving, his stomach starts to rumble.

There’s a little convenience store a few streets away in the most run-down part of the village, and one of the few places he’s never stolen from. The to-go onigiri there are one of the few things they’d ever been able to afford, and the cashier had never asked, or cared, how two filthy street children got their money.

It isn’t until he’s already paid for the two riceballs that he realizes his mistake.

He glowers at the umeboshi-filled extra, and the dumb little cartoon plum on the front with it’s dumb little cartoon plum face, and jams it into his pocket only to find that it won’t fit. He reaches in to remove the obstruction, and withdraws the bottle that had once housed stolen pills.

He stares at it as he walks, and her stupid sour rice ball that she isn’t here to eat, before cramming them into a separate pocket each, and starts on the much more reasonable salmon ball he always got for himself.

That stupid chunin was right about one thing. It’s already colder here now than it was in the dead of winter in his home village. The farther inland you go, he had learned, the colder it gets, until the perpetual snowfall of the highest places in the mountains.

When he takes stock of his surroundings again, he finds himself on the street where the cart had been parked, deep tracks from its wheels cut into the slush, and hoof prints marking its trail. There’s only one way out of the village, and that’s where it’s headed.

Kotone had cleared out their money for the pills, and there isn’t anything else in their little hideaway worth going back for. There’s an onigiri in his hand, another in his pocket, and a few coins stuck beneath it. He’s managed before with less, after all. The first time, he had left with nothing, and he’d made it here.

He follows the cart’s route through the heart of the village and then up the slope leading out of the ravine in which it sits. There are ninja posted by the gate, but they pay him no mind as he passes. Eventually the road splits. Even without the sign post he can tell one way leads to the coast, the way he’d come from, and another leads into the woods and towards the mountains. The cart went right towards the sea, and coincidentally, that’s where he was headed too.

He remembers the way, soon following the familiar scent of briny sea air, and there’s grey light creeping over the horizon by the time he reaches the nearest little fishing village—not his own, thankfully, but similar enough to make him uneasy. Still, no one will know him here, or know his mother. He follows the tracks right to the door of a barn at the edge of the village. There are little tunnels laid out in long rows beside the barn, halves of hoops buried into the ground and covered with plastic. The bare skeleton of the rings is apparent in many more rows, and peering underneath the plastic sheeting, he can see what probably amounts to one last crop of cabbages for the season. The sun rises late this time of year, so there are already sounds of activity nearby, and he wanders over to a chicken coop. The old farmer jumps when he turns and finds someone there unexpectedly, just managing to save his collected eggs.

He farmer eyes him warily. “You need something, kid?”

The boy returns his uneasy look, shifting a little in the snow. “D’you rent a cart out to some ninja?”

“Rent?” The man’s eyebrows lower into a frown. “They took it. When those… **_things_** need something of you, they aren’t **_asking_**.”

“Do you know where he went?”

The farmer shakes his head, muttering hurriedly that he doesn’t know anything and that the boy shouldn’t poke around, before quickly retreating inside his home.

He makes his way to the village streets, and gets a similar reaction from everyone else he asks. They pale, divert their eyes, shoo him away hurriedly, all in hushed tones like the ninja are demons that may appear if they hear themselves discussed. He gathers, though, that the academy is somewhere in the woods up the hill, if only in that he’s repeatedly warned not to go there.

In the dim morning light, the little fishing village is just starting to wake. There’s a little bakery lit up and emitting a sweet smell, though the sign says it’s closed, shopkeepers are readying their stalls, and the docks are teeming with activity as fishermen set out for their morning catch. The people he speaks with are eager to get rid of him, but no one’s outright hostile, so he risks approaching one of the bigger fishing boats and waits for one of the men working on the deck to notice him there.

There’s uproarious laughter when he tells them he’s looking for work.

It’s a small enough village that they know immediately that he’s a stranger. “Kid,” says one of them, leaning over the side to better hear him, “where are your parents?”

“Don’t have any,” he replies simply.

“How old are you?”

“Eight,” he lies, meeting the adult’s eye unwavering.

“D’you know anything about fishing?”

“No,” he admits. “But I learn fast.”

“Kid,” the man starts. He’s getting tired of that word. “The water’s freezing this time of year. If you fall in, you’ll die.”

The boy doesn’t flinch. “I won’t fall in, then.”

“Hm,” the man seems to consider him (thankfully he seems amused rather than offended by the boy’s boldness) and asks what he wants in return. Zabuza tells him, food and a place to sleep, and the man offers him a hand up onto the deck, tells him that they’ll let him stay in their basement if he earns his keep today. “Lucky you, we’re shorthanded,” he tells the boy. The younger man aboard, he learns, is his son. The missing crew member, he learns, is also his son, still healing from the loss of a hand to the cold.

“Don’t fall in,” the man warns him again, a bit more grimly than before.

That should probably frighten him, but it doesn’t. He has the sense to be cautious, of course, but trusts his balance and ability. The boat goes from buoy to buoy, dragging up the little crab pot attached, dumping them out onto the deck then baiting the trap and tossing it back. The fisherman’s older son shows him, begrudgingly and clearly incredulous of his ability, how to tell the ones they keep from the ones they toss back and leaves that task, apparently formerly his younger brother’s role, to him.

He has to work quickly and the crabs all look the same at first, but Zabuza’s always been a quick study. He knows he’s smart, and knows to trust his instincts, and he isn’t afraid of the great, wriggling sea-bugs or their claws, so soon he can sort them fast enough to appease the young deckhand and earn himself a place on their trip the next morning.

He’s been near the ocean before, seen it stretch away from the beach to the horizon, but he’s never been **_on_** it, been so far from shore that there’s nothing but dark, choppy water as far as the eye can see in all directions. That should scare him too, but it doesn’t.

It was the biggest boat there, but still small, and there isn’t much between him and the icy depths below. He can feel it, tossing the boat, this great unstoppable force of nature beneath his feet. It’s cold, unforgiving death they sail on, but he’s comfortable here. At home, even, with the cold spray on his face and incessant swaying, up and down. It’s dangerous, but all kinds of things can be deadly, and the ocean, at least, makes no attempt to hide what it is, makes no apologies for its nature.

Their family home is small, but warm and cozy in an unfamiliar way that makes him very uncomfortable and a little bit angry. There’s never any mistaking him for anything but hired help, barely noticing his presence unless there’s work to be done, but they’re on the pleasant side of indifferent, and that’s better than he was expecting. He only sees the younger son occasionally in passing, the empty end of his arm bound, before he hurries back to the safety his room, away from the strange boy living in their cellar.

The basement’s cramped, largely a storage space, but they make room for a bedroll between the crates of junk and it’s better than he’s slept in months. In the early hours of the morning, he finds that the fisherman’s wife has brought him a bowl of rice and a set of her injured son’s hand-me-downs. He just stares at them for a moment, to the offered things and then back to her, uncertain, but finally struggles to say something in return. He never manages a real thank you, but from her expression it seems she can tell that was his intention, however clumsily executed. He isn’t good at expressing gratitude, but he hasn’t had many opportunities to practice.

They’re called Ishida, collectively, and though he’s sure they all mention names at one point or another he’s never formally introduced to anyone, and by the time he realizes that he doesn’t know any of their given names, it seems far too late to ask. They don’t bother to learn his, as he’s always ‘boy’ or ‘hey you,’ but the distance is preferable, really, and he’s content to exist around the edges of their lives as long as there’s food and shelter. After he unintentionally sneaks up on Ishida for the third time that day, they start jokingly calling him a ghost.

It’s just as they’re hauling their catch off the boat on his third day with them that Ishida notices a crowd gathered by the beach, and stalks over to investigate.

“I wouldn’t,” Ishida’s son calls after him as he jogs to catch up with the man’s stride, but Zabuza ignores him and is soon poking his way between adults to try and get a look at whatever it is they’re fussing over.

“Shit, SHIT.” There’s a sturdy hand on his shoulder as Ishida pulls him away, and steers him forcefully back towards the boat. “Shit, kid, don’t look at that.”

He furrows his brow, trying to crane his neck for a look at it anyway. “What is it?”

“It’s one of the kids from the ninja academy up the way,” the fisherman replies with a sigh. “Whenever one dies, they just dump ‘em right over the edge. They wash up here, sometimes.”

Something in his stomach sinks. He isn’t afraid of dead bodies, not anymore. But something’s dawning on him and it’s putting the little hairs on the back of his neck on end. “They die.” It’s not a question, not really.

“Most of ‘em by the look of it,” Ishida says, mouth quirked distastefully. “They bring ‘em in by the cartful, and a handful come out.” The man shakes his head, scratching at a greying temple. “Poor boy. We usually don’t get ‘em like that this early.”

Boy. It was a boy that died.

The knot in his gut loosens, but only a little.

As they don’t involve him in actually selling their catch, his workday starts and ends early, leaving him ample time to contemplate the forest up the hill along the beach. He ventures farther in every day, but never sees anyone. There are signs of life, though, a clearing just by the edge of the woods bearing tiny footprints and deep gashes in a ringed target. There are other spots similar to it throughout the forest, more frequent the deeper he gets.

And then one day, after a particularly long walk into the woods, he hears people. Slowly, silently, he creeps through the underbrush to get a good look at the children running laps under the watchful eye of a different man in the same dull purple flak jacket as the one he had encountered. Carefully he watches each child as they pass at the point closest to him, keeps watching until he’s sure he’s seen everyone twice.

She isn’t there.

He slinks away, back towards town. It’s not that he has his heart set on seeing her, he assures himself, but she’s here, and he’s here, and he may as well try and track her down if he can.

If she’s even alive, that is.

He comes back at the same time the next afternoon, and still there’s no sign of her.

Many go in, few come out. Some, but not all, wash up on the beach bloated and unrecognizable. How many others must simply disappear into the waves, never to be seen again? Food for sharks, and hagfish, and the whole host of bottom feeders he knows prowls the ocean floor.

_‘It’s a better chance than you have with this lot.’_

He doesn’t bother coming back the next day.

/ / / /

The weather turns so suddenly that they barely have time to react. There’s little they can do but hang on as the storm tosses the boat on high waves, and seemingly keep it from capsizing with nothing but willpower and luck. And lots, and lots, of bailing.

It’s mid-January, and this was meant to be their last outing for the season. Now, caught in bad weather at the very farthest point of their route, they’ve been blown so far off course that the nearest port is on the island closest to the Land of Fire. He had been suitably alarmed, but kept his head, and when they finally reach port, Ishida tells him as much. They’re stuck there for the few days it takes to repair a hole in the side of the hull.

Zabuza notices a few things about the farthest island, besides the sight of Hi no Kuni in the distance on the far side. It’s warmer here than it should be for January, and there are ninja everywhere. They mill about in the streets (nervous civilians parting like a school of fish scattered by sharks), they gather by the shore to watch for enemy attack.

Apparently, the world is at war. This is the first he’s heard of it.

What he can gather is that this is a strategic point that the Land of Fire’s ninja (whoever those are) want to acquire to gain ground against the ninja from the Land of Lightning. Kirgakure was largely uninvolved, uninterested in anything but protecting its own borders from all sides.

Technically at war with everybody, all the time.

The more he studies the Kirigakure shinobi, the more he’s stuck by how young they are, maybe only a few years older than he is. There are quite a few of them but they don’t seem to speak to one another, just sort of occupying nearby space without interacting.

More often than not their eyes have a hollow stare, that’s so familiar it almost turns his stomach.

/ / / /

Ishida’s wife and youngest son had been waiting for them by the docks, overjoyed at their family’s safe return. Just watching felt like an intrusion, so Zabuza wanders away along the rocky beach, absentlt kicking a stone along as he goes.

It was well after dark when they got back to the fishing village, the full moon providing the only light. He reaches down to the stones, fumbles through them until he’s found one suitable for skipping, and pitches the flat rock as far as he can. He can’t really see the stone, just the moonlight on the ripples it sends across the water.

He’s been able to eat, and sleep, and between the work on the boat and practicing, when he has time to himself, what he’d learned from… well, that he’d learned about fighting, he’s stronger now than he’s been in a long time. Probably ever.

He’d filled the little plastic bottle with pebbles to provide more of a challenge, and keeps it in his pocket. Not that anyone would know it was there. Keeping his movements steady enough, even quickly, to stay silent is becoming second nature and it’s less and less often that he hears a rattle, and more and more frequently that he catches someone off guard.

He doesn’t need to steal anymore, but it’s a skill he has, and he means to perfect it. In everything he does, he wants to excel.

The moon hangs low in the sky, bright and pale, illuminating the hilltop and the dark silhouette of trees cutting across it. And then something passes between them.

He watches, and waits. Again, something small is moving in the clearing closest to the edge, a little shadow darting through the glow. Slowly, cautiously, he approaches, creeping silently through the snow towards the figure.

He manages to sneak up on her, and she doesn’t turn when he approaches. The girl is throwing a knife at a target, repeatedly, and he takes in the black pigtails, blue where the moonlight hits them, her height, the graceful brutality of each movement as she drives the knife into the splintered wood. When she turns, just long enough to be sure she’s seen him, her eyes are icy blue and vacant. She looks through him like she hadn’t really seen him, and turns, the set of her shoulders stubborn, back to her work.

When he speaks, the change is immediate. The tension leaves her posture, her hands slack at her sides such that the knife falls from her fingers to the snowy ground below. When she turns, her eyes are wide, and she blinks at him, owlish, before slowly stealing closer. He tenses when she throws her arms around his shoulders and pulls him close.

He had expected more of a reaction than she’d given initially, but he hadn’t expected **_this_**.

“Zabuza,” she says softly once she finally lets go of him, though not entirely. “You’re here.”

“Yeah, well,” the boy shrugs, breaks the embrace by shoving gently where his hands had come to rest on her sides, and ducking under her arms. “Warmer by the coast, right? Thought I’d have a better chance here over the winter.”

She nods, that smile he may be imagining still on her face, and accepts this as a valid reason for his presence. There’s an overturned log by the target and she scurries over to it, gesturing to the empty space beside her, insistently, until he sits.

She presses him for details: where he’s been, how he’s been doing. So he tells her about Ishida, and his work on the fishing boat, and his little corner of their basement. He omits everything with the blond chunin or the cart, but she doesn’t ask, content to take their meeting here as a lucky coincidence.

He swears she’s taller than the last time he saw her, like a bit of food was all the needed to kickstart a growth spurt that’s left him looking up to speak to her. He’s tempted to ask her about the dead boy that washed up on the beach, but thinks better of it.

“So,” he starts instead, eyeing the battered target. “I bet they’re teaching you lots of new stuff.”

“Oh yes,” she enthuses, nodding, getting back to her feet and stepping back so he has room to join her in the clearing, “all kinds of things.”

The girl draws the knife—a kunai, she asserts— again from the holster at her leg, and carefully presses it in to his hands. The metal’s warm where she held it, the blade clicking against the bolster where it’s set into the handle, and he examines it carefully, taking in the flattened shape, the glint of moonlight off the flat of the blade, and the razor sharp edge. It’s a tool for cutting, and stabbing, and throwing. It looks dangerous, but useful, and that’s all that really matters to him.

“Here,” she says, fixing the form of his grasp on the wrapped handle, and just like that they’ve settled back into their comfortable partnership. “Let me show you.”


	4. Chapter 4

It’s hard for her to say, exactly, what’s different.

Kotone doesn’t pay attention to the swirling mass of whatever it is inside of her, can’t tell one part of it from another, but in a vague general kind of sense, something’s changed— like maybe there’s a little less empty space in her heart. She’s gotten better at getting out of bed in the morning, she notices, and in class she’s redoubled her efforts, tapped into an entirely new source of resolve. When she learns things now, she listens not only with how to replicate the technique in mind, but how to **_explain_** it later, and that’s an entirely different level of understanding.

Sometimes she rushes to her clearing to find it abandoned, but more often than not he’s already there and training. By the way he’s improved, she’s pretty sure he’s been practicing all along.

He asks her about the war, and she tells him what they’ve told her. The Land of Water was mostly concerned with protecting its current property, and had very little interest in what the mainland got up to. The conflict itself is confusing and convoluted, and he’s never heard of half the places involved. When she meets him the next evening, she has her notebook in tow, and sits him down to go over the simplified map she’d drawn in one of her earliest classes.

They talk a lot about secrets, in her classes. Ninja do secret things, and know secret things, and it’s important to keep those secrets from other villages’ ninja. But these books are just full of maps, and history, and simple math and spelling. The techniques she learns are simple, and academy students everywhere can do them. Besides, things like that have to be kept from their enemies. Zabuza isn’t the village’s enemy, so what harm is it if she shows him things? She’d taught him things her father had taught her, and nothing bad had come of it.

“There’s lots of stuff about the world in there,” she tells him as he thumbs through the pages, an odd little scowl set into his sharp features. “You can borrow it if you want.”

He shoots her a sharp look, flipping another page without really looking at it. “That’s not funny.”

“No, really,” she insists, her own dark eyebrows dipping lower in confusion. “It’s all full up so I started a second one. You can have it if you want.” He snaps the book shut and shoves it back into her hands, squaring his shoulders and grumbling something disparaging about her stupid notes under his breath. She blinks at him, quirks her head to the side thoughtfully. “Can you not…?”

“I didn’t know you **_could_** ,” Zabuza snaps.

“Father taught me.”

His eyes flicker back in her direction, skeptically. “I can’t really picture that guy reading you bedtime stories.”

“I’m not sure what those are,” she admits, “but he gave me little exercises to do, like the ones they gave us in class.” The girl shifts closer to him on their makeshift bench, prods him with the spiral bound notebook until he looks over again. “Lots of people couldn’t at first,” she reassures him, opening the book to the earliest lesson. “I’ve got all the basic stuff here. See? So this is all the hiragana characters, and…”

She can see him watching her point out the symbols out of the corner of his eye, and gradually he turns as a kind of admission that he’s paying attention. She gets him to confess that he does know how to write his name, and nudges him with the pen until he accepts it, and slowly, hesitantly, scrawls it as neatly as he can out onto the page.

The boy’s struggling, and it’s clearly been a while since he’s learned it, or seen it, and what he has written isn’t quite anything. She studies it, carefully, and she’s pretty sure she recognizes the kanji he’s aiming for. She takes the pen back and, as neatly as she can, prints out the nearest thing she can think of that would be pronounced that way, though the meaning of it is a little unusual. “Is it like this?” He nods, and she hums to herself as she studies it again. So that’s his name, then. It’s not like it changes anything, but it’s still something new she can ascribe to her friend, another part of him she recognizes now.

She lays the kanji of her own name beside his, in the same dark blue ink. “And that’s me,” she adds, pointing to it with the tip of the pen, doodles a few easy little symbols above it. “So it’s like the fruit, and then this is the instrument, and then a sound. So that’s the characters for all those things.” She prints out the hiragana for the sounds beneath each character, like a key. Altogether there are only really four different sounds in his name (Oh. Well, four different ones. That can’t be bad luck, and he doesn’t believe in any of that stuff so vehemently that he’s probably safe from it anyway) and five in hers, so that’s nine different symbols with a point of reference. With the help of her notes from class, there’s something for every one of them, a little doodle of something he’d recognize with the spelling beside it.   


She insists that he take the notes home with him, and by the time she heads back to the academy he could stumble through most of the simplest sentences she’d copied down. The major stumbling block is his humiliation, because as soon as he has trouble with anything he tends to call the whole thing stupid, and sulk. She can always coax him back into trying again, though, and he must really want to learn if he lets her.

He takes to weapons in a heartbeat, and he can keep up to her in hand-to-hand combat as none of her classmates can.

From her description alone, Zabuza figures out how to mold chakra before she does.

It’s like all he needs to find it is to know it’s there, gripped by the concept of drawing the energy from his body and bending it to his will.   She **_knows_** about the theory behind the techniques she’s trying to learn enough to relay them, and once she’s shown him the handseals that she’s practiced again, and again without any result, it’s only a few days before he successfully swaps places with a sizeable rock he’d dragged out of the woods for exactly that purpose.

He’s thrilled, and it’s good to see him so happy. She feels sick, though, at the thought of her own incessant failure. This is all she was meant for, and she can’t do it right.

Insistently, Kotone pulls the boy down to sit beside her, and hopeful, implores him to explain it to her. Her teachers have tried, but he knows her better than they do and maybe, just maybe, she’ll understand him better.

He tries. Zabuza tells her, like her teachers did, that she needs to find the power sleeping inside of her and draw from it, and she can only shake her head, pigtails swaying. “There’s nothing inside me,” she tells him quietly, hands balling into fists in her lap. “Just nothing.”

She thinks, and searches, and lies awake at night trying to tap the hidden reservoir of chakra, but never seems to get any closer. Just when she thinks she’s on to something she loses track of the feeling and the energy she’d probably just imagined fades to nothing. Her teachers are indifferent to her shortcomings at first, and initially she’s hardly the only one that can’t manage a replacement or a clone. By spring, though, when she still fails to produce any E-ranked ninjutsu technique, her current teacher pulls her aside after class.

“I’m usually not supposed to intervene,” the man, tall with early greying hair, tells her as he crouches to better speak with the six year old. “But you’re good at everything else. I worked with your father on a mission or two,” he confesses, and she maybe stands up a bit straighter, eyes wide. “He had excellent chakra control, there’s no reason for you to be having this much trouble.”

He sighs, and looks back at her wearily as the last of the students filter from the room, and he has to shoot a quick warning to the children waiting outside who begin to press their way in.

“Look,” he says sternly. “In about a month, we’re going down to the ocean, and we’re practicing water-walking. It’s a much, much harder technique, and it’s entirely possible that you’ll freeze or drown if you can’t pull it off. I’ve spoken to the others, and they’ve all mentioned you among the best in their subjects, so it would be a shame to lose a good ninja to something so stupid.”

She nods, silently, and the man studies her carefully.

“Are you **_absolutely_** sure you can’t find your chakra reservoirs? You don’t feel anything?”

She sinks a sharp little eye-tooth into her pale lip. “Sometimes I…” Kotone begins, that kind of impatience that creeps up when she’s tried and tried and nothing happens settling into her again and knotting her stomach. “Sometimes I think I’ve found something, and I try to grab on to it, and follow it, but it always disappears.” Her hand snakes up through her pigtail to grasp the hair against her head.

“Wait,” the man interrupts her suddenly, taps on her hand where it rests against her skull. “Is that where you lose it? Right here?”

She nods, and takes hold of the other side the same way.

“Kid,” he says, a disbelieving little smile creeping across his face. “I think what you’re feeling is called a chakra gate. Most jonin can work one or two, but… Huh. That’s rare, in a kid your age.”

“Really?” Slowly, her fingers disentangle from her hair, and slip back to her sides. “What do you do with a chakra gate?”

“It’s a bottleneck on your chakra system, limits the amount going through the channels. But if you’re crazy enough, you could force it open,” he looks down at her, and smirks. “You afraid to die, kid?” Kotone shakes her head. “Then go for it.”

Through her other classes that day, the little kunoichi focuses on the chakra gate in her brain, a point of reference for the rest of her chakra system and carefully, not giving up when she feels it dissipate, she’s able to feel out the energy circulating through her. It’s not a single well as she’d been expecting, but a river of sorts, a flow from her center and out and then back to pool there again, the way blood flows through her heart. That same heart races when she leaves her last class that day, and she doesn’t even bother going to the mess hall before sprinting, full-tilt, to her little practice grounds and just sitting, quietly in the thawing snow, following it and tracing its path and finally, **_finally_** , gathering it up around her, enveloping herself in it.

When Zabuza finally comes trudging up the hill, there she is, two of her.

The closer Kotone flickers with her waning focus, and waivers, blinks out of existence for a moment as she catches sight of him and divides her attention. “ ** _Look_** ,” she says breathlessly, from him to the illusion and back again, sort of bouncing in place with this sudden boundless energy.

Slowly the look of shock on his face slides into a sly grin. “Well,” he says as he steps closer to inspect her work, “looks like you aren’t defective after all, huh?” He lets out a little laugh, and turns to her, still smiling but in a way that feels more genuine (it’s something in his eyes, she thinks). “Told you not to worry, didn’t I?”

She nods, still dizzy and light. There’s this compulsion to hug him again, but she thinks better of it.

The two practice until they’re ready to drop, chakra spent. It’s a different kind of fatigue, not just an ache in her muscles or a burning in her lungs (though there’s a fair bit of that too) but something deeper, a feeling of having been drained. Though she doesn’t have his natural ease (and probably never will), her chakra molding is passable; and passable is, at the very least, an improvement on non-existent.

Kotone gathers her chakra around herself in class the next day, cloaks herself in it and imbues it with her will. When she takes on the appearance of the little blonde girl seated beside her, there’s more than one shocked yelp, an approving nod from their instructor, and an enthusiastic cheer from the back that could only be Hatsuka. She lets out a long breath as the illusion breaks, and it’s like a knot pulled tight in her chest has finally come apart.

Dinner that night, as it often is, is fish and rice, simple but filling and a reliable fuel for an army in training. Among the echoing din of chatter and moving trays she notices something just out of the corner of her eye and has to do a double-take, a morsel of mackerel halfway to her mouth as she skips towards the table and blithely sits down beside herself.

“I’ve been wanting to try this,” the thing that is not her says, and though it comes out in her voice it does not sound like her at all. The mannerisms that bleed through the borrowed form are familiar, though, the giddy bouncing tone and the way he throws himself, haphazard, into the seat. “But I figured you’d think I was making fun of you, before.” She should look away and ignore him, as she always does, but she can’t. Kotone can only stare, blinking stupidly at her own face beaming, warmly, back at her, as the imposter lets out a high, silvery, giggle. It’s not an expression she’s ever seen set into her own features, not a sound she’s ever heard. “I knew you could do it,” Hatsuka says in her voice, nudging her on her shoulder amicably before he’s himself again and flits off after some friend passing by.

She has the girls bathroom to herself again that night, and she practices smiling like that in the mirror. She’s tried before, but it’s always come out forced and uncomfortable but now she has an image in her mind of what it would look like if it was natural, and she fumbles, awkwardly, until she gets it right. She may be an unfeeling instrument of her kage’s will, but there may come a time where she’s asked to impersonate someone who isn’t.

Kotone studies the happy little girl grinning back at her, with a smile that reaches all the way to her eyes and shows the gaps where adult teeth are growing in. It’s unfamiliar, but…. nice. It’s a nice, warm sort of sensation, she thinks, but something inside her is aching.

/ / / /

When the fishing season is over, and all the repairs to the equipment have been made, the Ishidas have no more work for Zabuza, and have to turn him away. They’re generous enough to let him keep the clothes they’d given him, that and Kotone’s notebook bundled in a plastic shopping bag, but he was a temporary hire, and by the next time they’re able to set off Ishida’s injured son should be well enough to take back his post. Zabuza is of no use to them now, and with no steady income in the off-season, they can’t afford to be charitable.

The dead of winter here is milder than it is inland, but still too cold for sleeping outside to be a viable option for very long. He spends a night curled between two close-set buildings to block the wind, and another two hiding in an unlocked toolshed.

He regrets mentioning to Kotone, off-hand, that the Ishidas wouldn’t keep him any longer because the next time he sees her she’s smuggled a mushed ball of rice and a lump of fish from her own supper for him, wrapped in a paper napkin and suspiciously molded into the shape of the largest pocket on her calf.

He means to refuse it, embarrassment making his face burn against the cold (because he doesn’t need her help. He **_doesn’t_** ,) but his stomach rumbles traitorously so he relents and eats the damn thing.

There are still cod fishermen going out in the mornings, but they all laugh him away when he approaches them. On his fourth day without work, though, a man from the boat he tries recognizes him from Ishida’s crew and directs him to a woman at the little fish market in town that buys some of their catch. Most of the village’s seafood is shipped inland, or to Kirigakure, but a little stays locally. Years ago, the man tells him wistfully, they could sell to the mainland too, but times had been much tougher since the war cut off that market.

She’s indeed been looking for help, but the grizzled old woman eyes him warily as she lets him into her shop. Still, she tentatively puts him to work. He works hard, but even on his best behaviour he’s a surly, foreign-looking, gremlin of a boy and it’s clear immediately that, small as he is, customers find him off putting when he helps her run her stall. She sets him gutting and cleaning fish instead, and as she demonstrates, brusquely, he gets the feeling that she’s looking for an excuse to be rid of him. He catches on quickly, though, and he’s alarmingly good with a knife for a child.

She doesn’t ask how he learned, so he doesn’t tell her.

It’s a similar arrangement to the last. The woman lets him sleep in her shop after hours, keep his things in her back room, and he eats what she gives him. It’s less free time that he had before, so he trains even harder when he’s able, and still he sneaks off to meet with Kotone when they release her for the evening. He begrudgingly finds himself looking forward to it.

There’s no reason to keep going back. He has all he needs to take care of himself and has no intention of enlisting, but still, he finds himself trudging towards the little clearing whenever he’s able. Even if he can’t use them, there’s power in the things she’s learning and it’s tempting to have, all the same.

With a place to sleep again, he’s able to resume his work at deciphering her notes. She has two other notebooks that she uses for her written classes, and she switches out between them, lets him borrow one, uses the other, and then swaps again. It’s slow going, and he’ll probably never enjoy it, but he’s getting the hang of reading it. There are passages about other countries, and other hidden villages, and long, almost worshipful, descriptions of each Mizukage’s life and accomplishments in minute detail (they sound like a bunch of jerks).

She draws up little doodles for him at the back of the book, everything labeled. There’s a beach drawn out, and he recognizes the words for fish, for shell, for crab, and with what might be two lumpy people. One has pigtails, the other spikey hair and an aggressive frowning face.

“Is that supposed to be me?” He asks her flatly when he flips to the back of the newly-exchanged booklet. Kotone nods innocently. He’s starting to suspect that she does, in fact, have a sense of humor.

There are other words he doesn’t recognize when he looks at it again after returning to the shop, but he puzzles them out quickly: sun, sand, girl, boy. There’s another word written between the two human figures and it takes him a longer moment before he pieces it together: friends. It says friends.  

As the snow begins to thaw, more and more of her classes are outdoors, and now that she’s there to tell him when she does what, he’s able to eavesdrop on the right class as he hadn’t before. She warns him against it, but he wants to see first-hand, and when he has the chance he creeps up to the outdoor training areas and watches through the underbrush. She catches sight of him and immediately snaps her focus back to her instructor (currently showing them new shuriken techniques) to avoid drawing attention to him.

He’s been practicing at moving quietly, still, pushing the speed and type of movements he can make silently. Since he’s been able to command his chakra, his ability’s become almost inhuman, as sufficient focus to the soles of his feet where they meet with the ground seems to dampen contact to nothing.

No one ever catches him watching. There’s a tense moment where he’s sure a small boy with wavy brown hair is aware of him, but if he was, he keept it to himself.

Slicing through translucent fish flesh or cleaning their entrails from the floor, when his mind can wander, he finds himself dwelling on her (he refuses to call it worry). He watches her struggle with her own energies, nightly, to the point where there’s frustration and hopelessness bleeding through her apathy. He’d genuinely tried to help her, but he isn’t good with words, and he isn’t sure there **_are_** words for what she has to do, just an instinct, a feeling. She insists that she’s just empty inside, and maybe she’s right. Maybe he had only imagined the tiny waiver in her voice.

Then, she succeeds, and the look in her eyes, he thinks, through the dampened filter of her reaction to everything, might scale to elation in anyone else. It could always just be his imagination, or, perhaps, it just takes a lot to move her a little, and she herself is oblivious to it. It’s an odd satisfaction, this thought that maybe, just **_maybe_** , he alone can read her near-invisible cues.

It’s soon after her initial brush with chakra that she tells him they’d gone down to the beach that day, and tried to keep themselves upright on the surface of the water. He’s already been channeling his energy to the soles of his feet, but this is an application he had never considered, and he’s eager to try.

She tells him, casually as they make their way towards the ocean, how a boy had wandered out past the ankle-deep shallows then toppled in and drenched himself in icy water. He hadn’t drowned, but with their medic in only a few days a month, he’d just bundled up as best he could and curled up in bed. He hadn’t woken up in the morning.

He considers her shaky-at-best precision and drags her back up the slope to a deep puddle he’d noted in the forest.

She tells him about a test they’d done in class, one day, with a little slip of paper that responds to chakra. Kotone, like many of the students, had the paper fall away into wet pulp in her hands. The boy who may have noticed him spying on their class had his crumble into dry confetti, and someone’s paper had spontaneously caught fire.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “If I’d known it would fall apart like that I’d have tried to save you a piece first.”

Zabuza peers over the sheer drop at the edge of the clearing where it overlooks the sea. He doesn’t need any litmus test to indicate what it is that speaks to him. “It’s okay,” he says, assuredly, remembering how unrelenting power of the waves had felt like home. “I know.”

They improve, steadily, as the days get longer. They waste little time on genjutsu, Kotone because it’s pure chakra control and Zabuza because he has no interest. Their skill with weapons improves, both partial to the kunai and halfway through her first summer they let her requisition a few more. It’s meant for practice with multiple targets in sequence, but unintentionally, is also useful for two trainees. Her aim is good with the smaller projectiles, but they’re fiddly, more a distraction than a real weapon, and they don’t hold nearly the appeal that the knife has, sturdy and reliable. Both excel in taijutsu and ninjutsu, though Kotone prefers the former because molding her chakra doesn’t come as naturally to her as physical attacks, and why waste the time gathering energy together when you could just kick the target in the face in the same time. Zabuza prefers the latter, because why would you just punch someone when you could throw a lake at them like the wrath of an angry god? (He isn’t there yet, but she assures him it’s possible.)

Her technique changes, though. While initially their styles had been similar, she learns the strategies embraced by Kirigakure above all others. She doesn’t retreat anymore, just throws herself headlong at him and attacks, ceaselessly. He prefers to hang back, and wait for an opening. They fight to a stalemate more often than not. Kotone is quick, into the space of his guard where her preference for using her elbows and knees as much as her fists gives her enough room to work. She dodges until she can get close enough, always with a forward momentum. She darts and ducks out of the way, agile and graceful. Zabuza keep her at a distance with well-aimed attacks and blocking whatever she throws at him. It works well for her, and she’s talented, but it’s exhausting and reckless and waiting for the right moment to strike perfectly suits him best.

When fall comes around, he picks up extra work at the apple orchard on the far side of the village. There are other children trying to make some extra money for themselves this way, all older than he is, but he’s faster and agile and more than keeps up with them.

He thinks, a long time ago, that his family had owned some fruit trees. He can remember their dry, rotting remains scattered around the ramshackle little cabin he’d grown up in.

The pay isn’t much, but it’s the first time he’s ever earned money honestly, and it’s more than he’s ever been able to steal. He hides it away in the back room of the shop, carefully in an empty jar that still smells of brine. It isn’t much, but it’s his. Who knows? Maybe he’ll stay here. Maybe, in time, he’ll be able to save up for rent on a room of his own. When he’s older, he’ll get real work on one of the fishing boats. Zabuza settles into his bedroll on the shop floor, and daydreams a future for himself until he drifts off to dream in earnest.

People here largely pretend not to notice him, but it’s better than outright disgust, and he can live with that. He doesn’t particularly like any of them, anyway. (This village also has the distinction of being closes to their country’s hidden village, so Kotone could visit him all the time, couldn’t she? Not that this is a selling point, of course).

Into the winter he picks up odd jobs where he can, and though the village as a whole is wary of him, he does good work and as that fact spreads, more and more people are willing to set him to work for a few hours here and there. His small savings grows slowly as he adds a few coins at a time. He could do well for himself here, he thinks, and it’s probably the first time he’s considered his future past surviving the next day.

Kotone bounds over to him one day in early November, and explains, words coming more quickly than usual, that the last day of the academic year, just for that one day, she can leave the academy. In fact, she’s required to leave, and won’t be allowed back until nine AM the next day. For that one day the little fishing village is no longer forbidden to her.

“Where are you going to sleep?” he asks, raising a thin eyebrow. She just gives a little shrug.

“They say we should be able to fend for ourselves for that long,” she says, the uselessness of anyone who can’t implied. Uselessness and failure making for a worthless shinobi are reoccurring themes in her notes. “And besides, I’ve slept outside before.”

“You could probably stay with me for a day,” he says, giving a non-committal shrug in return. “The old lady’s a bit prickly, but she’s not so bad.” The girl’s expression brightens and he braces himself in anticipation of another hug.

His work cleaning the day’s stock starts just after she’s to be shut out of the academy, so he agrees to meet her in their training spot if she’ll hang around or entertain herself until he’s done. At six am the next morning he leads her, yawning and still bleary eyed, back to the shop.

There’s a muffled greeting from the back as the little bell on the door jingles, followed quickly by an impatient sound that experience tells him is likely urging him to hurry to his duties.

He joins her at the counter, the ice packed fish all laid out ready to clean, and just as he’s about to get to work beside her, the old woman lets out a surprised squeak and accidentally knocks a salmon to the floor.

“Zabuza,” she starts, paling as she sets eyes on the little blue-eyed creature in her black uniform peeking into their workspace. “Do you know this girl?”

Her tone is warning, something unspoken and heavy. “No,” he starts carefully. “She was wandering around outside. She wanted to know if she could spend the day here.”

She seems to let out a breath, relaxes a little. Usually, of the two of them, it’s him that attracts strange looks, but when shinobi pass through (instructors at the academy on their way in or out, by the way Kotone tells it) everyone does stay well out of their way. The look on the fishwife’s face isn’t fear now, or disgust, either. Her crinkled eyes have softened into a look of unusual, inexplicable sympathy as she regards the girl and with a sigh, she pulls Zabuza aside. “Sure,” she tells him with a sigh. “Why not? But be careful. There will be a lot of those wandering around today— goodness is it that time of year already?— so keep your distance. They aren’t all as docile as that one.” Zabuza has to fight very, very hard to keep a straight face because he’s seen her splinter the wood of their practice target with a well-aimed knife. He’s sparred with her and left with deep bruises, had met her when she’d tackled him to the ground, and he’s watched enough of her classes to know he’s formidable and that she can match him. (Not that he knows her, of course; he found her outside, just now.)

“And Zabuza-kun,” it’s unusual for her to speak with him so fondly, but she’s still got that strange look on her face. “Just don’t get attached, alright?” she straightens anxiously, adjusts her gory apron and makes a show of returning to her usual grouching, though it seems forced. “I don’t want you pining when you should be working.”

“Yeah,” he says, eyebrows furrowed as he tries to ignore her strange behaviour. “That won’t be a problem.”

“Alright, shoo. I can manage without you for a day,” she says, carefully plucking the knife from his hand and waving him off. She’s thin but not frail, sturdy muscle still apparent through wrinkled skin. “Go on then.” Glancing back at her skeptically he nevertheless makes his way out into the shop proper.

“She seems nice,” Kotone muses as she follows him outside again, the little bell ringing away as they pass.

“I guess,” he grunts, jamming his hands into his pockets. He’d taken a fair bit of his money, earlier, and keeps having the thought that he’s lost one. “She’s not usually like that.”

It isn’t just her, either. Everywhere they go, he notes people averting their eyes when the fall on her, or some giving her an odd strained smile, which she returns politely. He knows it’s fake, because her real one is less than that, smaller, but it’s a better forgery than she could manage before. They seem to know what she is immediately from her clothing. There are others like her wandering around, and he notes the same tension in the air between them and the villagers, but Kotone wants to avoid the other students in the worst way, which makes it difficult to investigate properly.

There isn’t much to do in the little village but it’s the first change of scenery she’s had in a year, and the girl is perfectly content to let him show her around. The weather’s miserable, the beach is dull, the shops are dull, and she keeps ducking into alleyways or behind street signs when a child she recognizes passes by, but all in all he can’t call it a bad day.

He disappears into a shop around nightfall, leaving her outside (it’s easier to get things done without everyone shying away from her). He’s relieved to find he has a few ryo left when he emerges again with a carton of take-out noodles.

She’s adamant, at first, that she doesn’t need any but after an extended back and forth of exasperated offers and refusals she finally agrees to share it with him, vowing to pay him back when she has an income (honestly he’s just glad to be rid of the feeling of being indebted to her, and considers the few days of smuggled meat and rice repaid).

The two children scale what he knows to be a little grocery shop full of canned and dried food and the last of the fall and earliest of the winter vegetables. They sit on the roof together, sharing their first honest meal. He shares his plans for himself between mouthfuls of fried noodles and thick sauce.

“Hey,” she remarks without prompting, “if you’re here, I bet I could visit you a lot.”

“Huh,” he hums to himself, feigning disinterest. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

 

/ / / /

 

When it gets warm enough her second year, swimming becomes a ‘life skill,’ if not the most important one. Her class spent writing and dividing in the colder months is now strokes, and laps back and forth between floating buoys until she’s exhausted and overheating despite the ocean’s chill.

She tells her de facto training partner all about it that evening, and not to be outdone, when she meets him the next night his hair is dripping wet and his cheat heaving.

“Wait for me tomorrow, ok?” she suggests, as they instead switch to practicing simple jutsu. “We can go swimming together.”

The next evening they make their way down to the section of beach she can access without leaving her permitted range. Zabuza yanks his shirt off over his head, then plunks down to sit on the rocky shore and sets to removing his sandals while she wades into the shallows. Her clothes are tight around the shoulder seams and knees, clinging as they’re soaked through, but she’s grown so much recently that whoever’s manning the supply room looks at her skeptically when they check the requisitions sheet and see just how frequently her name appears for larger clothes or sandals. There are bigger kids in her year, but she’s the tallest.

“You’re going in like that?” she hears him call from the beach. Kotone turns, the waves lapping at her calves making a pleasant splashing sound, and shouts back to him.

“This is how they have us do it. Your clothes weigh you down, so it’s more work like this.”

Without breaking eye contact, the boy glowers at her and slowly, challengingly, puts his shoes back on and reaches for the discarded shirt.

In the distance is a tiny island, little more than a bump of earth raised from the shallow water, dotted with a few trees. They make this their goal as they set off. He’s a good swimmer already, but she shows him the things they’d taught her to fine-tune each stroke for the best possible efficiency. The water’s still cold, and her teeth chatter as she tries to speak to him, but it’s not the unbearable biting, burning cold of the winter months.

She pulls ahead just as they’re almost to the island. It isn’t a race, not really, but they’d been side by side until now, and she doesn’t think that he’s fallen behind, just that she’s suddenly remembering how her instructors had stressed speed as the most useful aspect. Coming up for air every stroke was their primary example of inefficient technique, as the farther you can go between breaths, the less time you waste and the quicker you are.

She hasn’t come up for air in a while now. Mist ninja are creatures of water, and the longer she can hold her breath, the more use she’ll be. She brushes something solid, and for a moment, she thinks she’s reached the island, but it’s just a huge smooth bump of rock rising up from the bottom so she ignores the burning in her chest and presses on. She thinks she can see the slope of the seabed rise to the surface, and she’s almost there as blackness begins to eat away at her field of vision.

 

/ / / /

 

Zabuza spits out a mouthful of cold seawater as he tries to get a decent look at his progress. The island’s steadily growing closer but she’s way ahead of him and he swears he’s going to come out her every day until he can beat her. He stops, and treads water. He’s lost sight of her. There’s no way she’s reached it already, but the gently splashing of her strokes has stopped.

All black hair and wet black clothing, he nearly doesn’t see her, but he catches sight of something bobbing in the waves and his stomach drops. He dashes over, an instinctive, clumsy dogpaddle, but still manages to catch hold of her just as she slips beneath the surface.

“Kotone?” he tries when he manages to get her head above water. She doesn’t answer, and he’s struggling to keep her out without going under himself. “Shit, **_shit_** ,” he sputters as he catches sight of the raised bit of rock hauls her out, cold and still and unresponsive.

“Come on, Kotone,” he growls, panic rising in his throat as he crawls out onto the rock beside her. Desperate, he grabs hold of her shoulder and shakes. “ ** _Breathe, you idiot_**.”

Her eyes flutter open and the girl coughs up a mouthful of water. Slowly, still sputtering, he helps her sit up, and she blinks the salt from her eyes.

“What the hell was that?” he demands, once he’s sure she’s alright.

“I wanted to see how long I could go without breathing.” She still sounds a little dazed. A gust of wind blows over the sea and the two children shiver.

Zabuza lets out an exasperated sigh, and glares at her. She explains something about pushing herself, and wanting to be a better ninja but he just keeps leveling that gaze at her until she trails off.

“You saved me,” she says quietly, sinking a tooth into her lip when he ignores her, shaken and fuming. “I’m sorry. I think I… overreached, a little.”

“A little,” he grumbles back, bitterly. When he glances back at her she’s giving him that kicked puppy look, up through her eyelashes and with another heavy sigh he relents. He watches her like a hawk as they swim back to shore, but she doesn’t try anything similar.

“Thanks,” she says, warm against his side as the two, soaking wet and shivering, cling to one another on their way back up the slope.

“It’s fine,” he mutters, deliberately averting his gaze. Somewhere in the storage closet of the little fishmonger’s is an empty pill bottle full of pebbles. “Let’s just say we’re even now.”

Summer soon gives way to fall, and fall soon chills to winter well before its genuine start. He gets the feeling she won’t be allowed to come back to the shop again that November, so he ignores the suspicious look the shop owner gives him when he dashes off for the afternoon and they spend another lazy day together dodging her classmates and more haunted looks. The barn he’d first encountered upon reaching the village is poorly guarded and often unlocked, so they spend the night in a corner of the hay loft, huddled together for warmth as they’d done so often before.

 

/ / / /

Her first day of her third year, what’s left of her class is instructed to gather up their few possessions, and relocate to the sequestered wing of the academy. They pack up their things in the boxes they were given on day one, and trudge down the hallway to the unfamiliar part of the school.

“Hey! Hey that’s my sister,” she hears someone shout from front of the group as they pass the open door of a classroom. “Momo! Hey, Momonga!” But before he gets the reaction he’d wanted, the chunin leading them has grabbed Hatsuka roughly by the arm and sends him skidding across the hallway with a sharp jerk. “Sorry,” he stammers as he sinks back into the crowd under the instructor’s withering gaze. “Sorry.”

The third year dorm room is considerably smaller, with fewer bunks. Of the two hundred children that arrived, one hundred and forty remain, the rest lost to cold, exhaustion, sickness, or accidents.

Kotone manages to secure herself a bottom bunk in the far corner of the room, preferring the cozy feeling of the lower half than the open top.

Before she can stop him, Hatsuka slides his possessions into the space beside hers under the bed and grins at her before walking straight up the wall and falling onto his mattress with a worrying creak. Hatsuka is scrawny, and average in hand-to-hand combat and classes, but he’s good with weapons and his chakra control is second to none. She’s often observed him hanging from walls or the ceiling through chakra focused through the soles of his sandals, seemingly just for the fun of it.

Her free time is now midday, and she leaves Zabuza a note in their training ground. It’s less often that he can manage to slip away from working, and for less time, but he practices on his own to the point of collapse and what time they do have to train together is intense and productive.

They learn their first suiton technique, the only one they’ll be taught as academy students. The water clone jutsu is difficult, far beyond what most shinobi are required to learn before they’re genin, but their instructors assure them that no other hidden village’s academy curriculum is as involved and demanding as theirs. Zabuza takes to it quickly but soon she too can pull together a wobbly watery form and improves from there.

Third year brings about another new task unique to kirigakure. “The hidden mist technique,” their temporary ninjutsu instructor tells them coolly, “used in conjunction with the silent killing technique, is the pride of our village, mastered only by the greatest among us. It falls to the rest of you,” he continues producing a number of little bells, looped through string, “to not fuck it up for them.”

They tie the scuffed, bent little bells around their necks like a class of housecats. They’re to be worn at all times, and that first class is nothing but moving about trying to keep the bell as still as possible whole their instructor stands, eyes closed, in the middle of the room. In all their classes, from now on, anyone caught making excessive noise will be reprimanded, until they can keep quiet in all things, reflexively.

She’s practiced this before, and it comes easily. Creeping around the room, slowly, like a slow whirlpool around the chunin. A few students seem to have decided that it’s safest not to move at all, but most of them try and the room is nearly completely silent. There are a few heavy footfalls, a few loud intakes of breath, but for today it’s only the sound of the bell they’re focused on. It’s actually a rather fun game, she thinks to herself.

It’s just then that Hatsuka trips over a loose panel in the floor and crashes into her.

There’s a jarring clatter of ringing metal and the chunin moves so quickly she hardly sees it. She and the chestnut-haired boy are sent arcing through the air by the blow to fall hard against the stone wall of the room. The side of Kotone’s body that made contact is on fire, her face stinging severely, and the room spins around her when she cracks her eyes open. She ducks her head, ashamed, and vows to herself to do better.

“If a real enemy had heard you,” the chunin hisses at them, “you’d both be dead.”

The tension is palpable from then on, in every class and in the hallways students wincing and glancing around nervously whenever there’s a jingle. When an instructor does hear, the results are swift and merciless. Fear and suffering drive them together. There are more casualties as the training becomes more strenuous, more dangerous, in harsher conditions. She can see them rallying around one another, leaping to the aid of an injured classmate once the shadow of the chunin has passed, or pairing together to train and keep an eye out for trouble, banding together to grieve over an empty bunk. Still, their teachers never intervene. They just observe this bonding behaviour, impassively, noting it silently.

Zabuza’s furious when he first sees the massive bruise blooming across the side of her face.

“It’s my fault,” she assures him, hands held palms out in an appeasing gesture. “I made too much noise.” That doesn’t seem to help.

She unties the bell from around her neck and lets him try it. It doesn’t ring once throughout their training session. On his own, even without the threat of immediate and agonizing pain, he’d mastered it through sheer determination and will.

There’s a tense energy gathering inside of her as fall approaches for the third and final time. Zabuza’s ready for her exam to be over if only so she’ll stop obsessing over it. They were given no real details, just that it would be an assessment of their worth and the culmination of three years of work. Her free hours the day before the test she can hardly keep still. She goes over everything, every ninjutsu technique, every hold, block, stance, kick and combination of attacks she can think of, prods him into quizzing her on the contents of her notebooks.

This was the day the first and second years were kicked out of the area for the day, and though no one had ever said so she finally realized that it was so the third year students could study uninterrupted. Her classes had all been cancelled for the evening, so she, still bounding in place, begs him to come meet her for more practice at the old time, after supper.

“You’re going to burn out,” he tells her wryly. “If you hurt yourself, you’ll be terrible tomorrow.”

“No such thing as too much training,” she insists, and keeps pestering until he agrees, hesitantly, that he’ll **_try_** and make it there again tonight.

There’s a kind of electricity in the air, as her classmates exude both relief and nerves. They file into the tiny third year mess hall, and the enthusiastic chatter dies as they step inside, the ball of stunned students accumulating as more step into the room and see the scene laid out before them. There’s food on the trays, the tables all pushed to the far side of the room, but it’s the two unfamillar figures standing before them that’s caught their eye. There’s a man in a hunter-nin uniform watching them cryptically from behind the curving eyes of his white mask, streaks of teal blue set across it.

The other figure is the third Mizukage.

Stiffly, uncomfortably, the group seems to realize all at once that it should probably kneel, and the hundred and eight surviving children sink to the ground, shuffling out of one another’s way.

He’s a middle aged man with surprisingly normal features and long, greying black hair. He’s sturdily built, though, and even through the robes Kotone can see how every movement is precise and purposeful.

“I’m here,” he begins, his voice even and low, “because I, naturally, take a personal interest in the future of this village and tomorrow, half of you,” his black eyes pass over the crowd, “will go on to join the dreaded ranks of the Village Hidden in the Mist.”

There’s a hushed chatter through the group and boldly, one boy that she’s never paid much attention to raises his hand. “Mizukage sama,” he begins haltingly, “are half of us going to fail?”

“No,” the leader of their village says, unblinking. “Half of you are going to die.”

A cold silence falls over the room, interrupted after a seeming eternity by an eruption of hysterical, disbelieving laughter from the back of the room. “T-that’s a joke, right?” No one answers.

Kotone only becomes aware of how she’s felt frozen to the spot when she glances over, surprised that the outburst actually hadn’t come from Hatsuka. Hatsuka is near her, white as a sheet but she can see in his eyes that he’s long past denial. There’s a terrified certainty in the set of his features.

“I tell you this now,” their kage begins slowly, “because I have no place in my village for cowards. The doors are unlocked. Run, if you want to. However,” he pauses, and turns to the oinin motionless beside him. “There will be dire consequences, for you, for anyone who helps you, for anyone who hides you. You aren’t academy students anymore. A runaway academy student is a disobedient child to be punished, but as of tomorrow, you will be ninja. And for a ninja to flee his duty is an act of treason.”

“This is a member of the Hunter division,” the third rests a hand on the soft shoulder of the other ninja’s coat, and the masked man steps back towards a lumpy thing covered by a sheet that she’d been too focused on the Mizukage to really notice. The assembled children watch, eyes wide, as he pulls a set of sharp, glinting tools from inside of his coat, and throws back the sheet. It’s a corpse, eyes still frozen in terror, thistle grey flak jacket pierced by long thin needles through what would be his heart and lungs.

“He’s going to show you what we do to deserters.”

 

/ / / /

 

It’s later than he’d intended when he finally slips away from the village, and he dashes full tilt up the hill, winded by the time he reaches their clearing.

Kotone’s there, and he makes no effort to hide his footfalls, but she doesn’t look up when he approaches. She just sits on their makeshift bench, head down, nails digging into the sodden wood, face obscured by the curtain of her blue-black hair.

“Hey.” No response, so he tries again, and still nothing. It isn’t until he sits beside her and reaches out for her shoulder that she seems to snap out of whatever trance she was in.

“Oh,” she says quietly, like he’s appeared out of nowhere. “Oh… that’s good… I was hoping I’d get to see you…” she trails off, still not really looking at him.

He frowns at her, something uneasy taking hold in his chest. “Big day tomorrow. Shouldn’t you be practicing?”

She shakes her head, dark pigtails swishing over her shoulder. “I don’t think it will make much of a difference, now.”

He quirks his mouth to the side, his eyebrows dipping deeper in confusion. “Well did they at least tell you what the exam’s going to be like?”

She doesn’t say anything, just pulls her shoulders in tighter and her focus seems to wander again, her mind father away.

The unsettled feeling is creeping up his spine, intuition whispers to him that something is very, very wrong. He stands with a determined sound low in his throat and pushes his way in front of her, grabs her firmly by the upper arm and kneels. “Kotone,” he demands, before she can drift away again. “Kotone look at me.”

Slowly, hesitantly, she raises her eyes to meet his.

“You know what the exam is,” he guesses, pushing himself back to the fallen log but carefully not letting go so she has to turn to face him. She gives a little nod, and somehow he already knows, knows as this chill creeping down his spine, but he asks anyway.

She tells him.

“A lot of things make sense now,” she muses, seemingly more present now that her secret is out in the open.

“Do you know who?” he asks numbly.

“They say it’s random.”

He’s still shaking his head, his fingers clenching tighter on her arms. “They can’t do this,” he says, voice breaking for a moment. “They **_can’t._** ”

“I’m theirs. They can do whatever they want with me.”

He shakes his head emphatically. “No. You do everything they want for years, and they just… just **_turn_** on you? Like it wasn’t **_enough_** for them? No. How are you so **_calm_** about this?”

She inclines her head, in that familiar thoughtful gesture, and her hand slides up to rest on his, likely meant to calm him. “I don’t feel anything,” she reminds him. “How should I feel?”

“ ** _Betrayed_**.”

An idea strikes him like lightning, and frantically the boy jumps to his feet. “We could leave,” he whispers hurriedly. “Right now. We steal a boat— hell, we could **_walk_** — to one of the little islands, catch a ferry to the mainland, and disappear. They’ll never, ever find us.”

“Us,” she breathes, bright eyes wide and shining. “If I ran away, would you come with me?”

“Yeah.” He nods, surprised at his own certainty. “Yeah, I would.”

“That… that sounds wonderful, but…” She mouths something, starts to speak but she hesitates, something almost pained flickering across her face. “No. No, I **_can’t._** I… I won’t.” The set of her jaw is determined as the eight year old shakes her head. “This is what I’m **_for_**.” It comes out as a whisper. “I have to go. At eight AM tomorrow, I have to be at the arena. Please understand.” Then she smiles at him in that way that’s too normal to be real, still trying to reassure him. “I’m not scared.”

He can only blink at her stupidly for a long moment, something constricting in his chest, before slowly sinking down beside her.

“Thank you,” she wraps her arms around him, and pulls him into a crushingly tight hug, so close he can feel her trembling. “Thank you for being my friend.”

With a resolute little breath of air, and lets go, wanders over to the kunai she’d left embedded in their wooden target before hesitating and reaching down to the holster at her thigh. “Oh… Oh, haha. Silly me. I’m only allowed one, and… I think I get a better feeling from this one. So…”

She steps away, expression still placid but her movements unsteady. “How about I meet you back here, at noon tomorrow, if I can?”

“Sure,” he says shakily. “I’ll see you here tomorrow.”

“Wish me luck,” she says before turning towards the forest and the academy.

“Kotone—!” he calls after her, and she pauses. “Just… Just win tomorrow, alright?”

“I can’t promise that, but,” she gives a tiny nod. “I’ll do my best,” and then she’s swallowed by the shadows, disappears into the dark between the bare trees.

He sits there, in the cold, thoughts circling again, and again, around the same inescapable conclusion, hands clenched into fists.

He can still hear the blond chunin’s taunting rejection but it’s striking a different nerve than before. _I’m doing you a fucking favour, here,_ he’d said. _It’s a better chance than you’ve got with this lot._

He thinks of the way the villagers had all looked at her, uncomfortable and sickly sweet.

They had known. They had known all along.

He thinks of her father, training her and schooling her, all the while just to offer her up like a lamb for the slaughter, all trussed up in a little pink ribbon.

He thinks of the notes she’d taken, her reverence for the Mizukage laid out painstakingly in blue ink and a neat, careful, hand. The same man who was allowing this, who had ** _ordered_** it. She devotes herself, body and soul, to his service, and how does he repay her? Is that what happens when you’re the Mizukage? All that power, and people just start to look like little pawns to use, and discard?

No. No, not pawns, tools. **_Weapons_**. Isn’t that what she’d always called herself?

His fists shake, something bigger than anger, more than just rage, focused to a laser point, white hot inside of him. He waits for it to pass but it only grows, the inevitable end growing clearer.

Well, wasn’t it true?

He had been left to die by the people of his village, his life nothing to them as it was nothing to the people of Kirigakure. Here, he was cared for only as long as he was useful. Ultimately, he has no worth outside of what he can do for someone who has what he wants. People pretend to be moral, and civilized, but ultimately they’re animals, all fighting for the same resources, no mercy, no right. There is no inherent value in a human life, not his, not Kotone’s, not the other condemned children they’d spirited away only to abuse and betray. Make them eat together, sleep together, suffer together and then set them against each other to kill their hearts and make them better empty vessels for another’s will.

It’s was cruel— too cruel, but it was **_allowed_** , because the people with enough power deemed it necessary.

If that was the way of the world, so be it.

If those were the rules, he could play.

Zabuza’s dark eyes flicker to the kunai she’d left embedded in the splintered wood, the gouges she’d left there likely the only mark she’ll have left on the world if she dies tomorrow.

It pulls free easily, and he studies the blade with a newfound appreciation. It can cut, it can slice, it can stab but these things are not its purpose. A kunai’s purpose— what it’s **_for_** — is to kill.   He doesn’t go back to the fishmarket. He never goes back to the fishmarket.

Zabuza and his kunai spend the night beneath the bleachers of a dusty arena.

 

/ / / /

 

When the sound becomes unbearable, she kicks upwards, nudging the underside of Hatsuka’s bed, sharply, with her foot. “Go to sleep,” she hisses. The boy above her just cries harder.

“I **_can’t_** do this,” she hears him whisper frantically. “These are my **_friends_**.”

“You heard the hunter-nin,” she says, eyes fixed above her on the underside of his mattress through the wooden slats cradling the top bunk. She’s never answered him before, and he squeaks in surprise when she does, but it can hardly make a difference now. He’s tossing, and turning, and the frame shifts and creaks. “Ninja leave the village, people you’ll have worked with, will have known. They have to die. If you can’t kill whoever you’re asked to, you’re no use.”

“I’ll…” Hatsuka takes in a shuddering breath. “If I die tomorrow, I’ll never see my sister again…. or my mother, or father. Or all my cousins… or uncle Risu, but that’s not really— I mean,” there’s a soft thud, then another, as he beats his head against his worn pillow, trying to muffle his tears. “I just want to go **_home_** ,” he squeaks, voice thick with a half-choked sob.  

“Then go home,” she answers simply. “Straight through whoever it is they put in front of you.”

He’s quiet for a moment, still all shuddering breaths and choked whimpering as he tries to will his voice even again. “Even if it’s you?” he asks skeptically.

“Especially if it’s me,” Kotone replies, voice steady. She pauses, waiting for a reply, and nests herself more snugly in her bed sheets when there is none. “I’m going to sleep now,” she announces firmly, just loud enough to be sure he’s heard her, and shuts her eyes. Kotone tries to clear her head and drift off, but can’t.

She thinks of Nezumi Hatsuka, fighting and killing to see his family, and understands that this is fundamentally wrong.

Orders should be enough—are enough, for her. She’ll fight, and she’ll win if she’s capable, because it’s asked of her. If she dies, then she wasn’t good enough, wasn’t worthy, and then Kirigakure will be rid of her and it will be better off for it. Her desire to win tomorrow, she tells herself, is completely centered on proving her worth as a kunoichi, her value to the village and to her Kage.

It obviously has nothing to do with the boy she’s promised to return to if she survives.

He was fine without her for a long time, and he would be again, all dangerous thoughts of running away together dispelled. No matter what happens to her tomorrow, he’ll be alright.

With that thought, she must have drifted to sleep because when she next opens her eyes, it’s morning.

Silently, the girl slips out of bed. Everywhere she sees shaking limbs and dark circles beneath the eyes of her classmates, many of whom haven’t left their bunks yet.

Hatsuka doesn’t seem to have slept at all, and she can see him atop his bunk, staring lifelessly into an untouched bowl of rice he must have brought back from the mess hall, eyes still red and glassy.

There are only a few other third years there when she wanders down, other children of shinobi families or of a particular character that have set their faces with grim determination as they force themselves to eat.

She has the senior girls’ small locker room to herself when she showers. Today, every small action seems heavy with meaning, her motions deliberate. Everything she does this morning could be for the last time.

She towels off, dresses, brushes out her hair, hesitates as she’s about to tie it up in her usual pigtails— childish and impractical.

If she survives today, she’ll be a ninja—an adult.

Kotone gathers her hair into a high ponytail and starts towards the arena.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big hug to everyone reading this <3 I hope you're enjoying so far! I've got a few finished chapters left, so going to keep posting one every few days until it'll be caught up to my ff.net account, and then I'll post them as they're written :)


	5. Chapter 5

She finds her way to the arena by memory.

Kotone’s never been inside, of course, none of them have, but they’ve been led past it, had it pointed out to them by instructors, and on a clear day it’s visible, far in the distance, through bare trees. This morning, mist hangs thick in the air and the world fades to grey obscurity a few paces before and behind her.

Frost clings to each blade of grass, glistening and brittle. It snaps beneath her feet, and though she can’t see them, she hears other crisp footfalls, muffled by fog and distance, as her classmates wander towards the same destination. She shouldn’t be able to hear them. They shouldn’t be able to hear her, and the thought rekindles a dull ache across her face.

She remembers herself, and walks silently.

Had Kotone ever had occasion to have seen a barn, she might think the arena resembled one. It’s tall, wooden planks grey and ragged, but it suits its purpose well enough. An unfamiliar chunin loiters by the open side of the heavy wooden doors, herding the few children to arrive before her inside with an impatient wave of his hand, and the girl picks up a trot obey more quickly.

It’s dark inside, rays of light cutting through the gloom where gaps in the ceiling let it through, and then it’s scattered again by the heavy beams running above. Motes of dust drift through the streams of light as the children gradually filtering into the ring disturb the loosely packed dirt of the arena floor. Some stumble inside, eyes wide and breath short, others step into the ring purposeful and resolute. Hatsuka falls somewhere between when he makes his way through the herd of aspiring and condemned ninja, hugging himself tight, but expression all grim determination. To live, or to die, she can’t tell; only that he’s made his decision.

Across from the door is a raised platform, sturdier than the rest of the building and seemingly made from newer wood. The Third Mizukage is surveying them from this perch high above, hands resting on the wooden railing. Beside him, leaning against the arena wall, but gaze fixed carefully on the students is a man she can’t place, middle aged with white-blond hair.

The room darkens abruptly as the door swings shut, the chunin slipping outside and barring it behind them.

The snap of a sharply brandished paper catches their attention, over a hundred pairs of eyes turning at once to their Kage and the list in his hand. “Lets begin, shall we?” His voice is low, but the assembled mass of academy students is hushed by fear or focus. “When I call your names, line up together against the wall. Once you’ve all been paired, we’ll start the matches.” Kotone takes a deep breath, and holds it.

She isn’t afraid, doesn’t know what it is to be afraid.

Her heart hammers away in her chest.

“First up,” Sandaime calls casually, gesturing to the far corner of the room, “Nakano Sota and Ume Kotone.”  

She opens her eyes, slowly exhales the held air, and steps away from the group. She recognizes the boy that detaches himself from the crowd. He’s shorter than she is, but heavier, neat dark hair falling into his eyes, amber and focused on nothing. As he wasn’t a part of her class, she’s never seen him work, not really, but she knows him as someone else who kept largely to themselves, another child of shinobi parents.

His hands are shaking.

The boy pulls ahead of her to stand in the corner, keeping the wall to his back and very deliberately keeping his eyes off of her.

Two by two the children pull from the safety of their huddle to stand against the wall. She recognizes the pairs together. Friends from classes or the mess hall, sparring partners. The two girls from her group hold each other. Two children with the same surname are called one after the other. The boy shrieks and buries his face in his hands as his nearly identical sister steers him into place.

Kotone averts her eyes as they sob into one another’s arms. This is something she can’t understand, but knows is not meant for observers.

Beside her, Sota has gone pale. His shaking’s worsened to a visible tremor, and he’s whispering to himself quietly so she ignores him, too. Instead, she closes her eyes and breathes deeply, tries to clear her mind, ignore the pulse beating against her ribcage, and focus only on the flow of her chakra until her name is called again.

A boy at the far end of the room lets out a blood curdling scream, and everything goes quiet again.

She recognizes his voice, can put a face to it, but not a name. Just another of the children inhabiting the academy at the same time as she did. Kotone takes another breath and ignores whatever is happening towards the bleachers, whatever match they’ve made now, and shuts her eyes more tightly when a confused murmur rises from the same corner, and can’t resist blinking them open again when almost immediately it explodes into a flurry of movement and shrieking.

She can’t see what’s happening, the pair closest to her leaning in for a look as well, but whatever’s going on, the Mizukage is simply watching. His hand is planted across the other ninja’s chest, holding him back, as he’s frozen in place as if to vault over the railing.

She steps away from the wall to see around the other children, catches only a cloud of dust and frantic academy students that’s slowly sweeping up the line. The instant Kotone turns her back to him, she hears Sota move.

Behind her is the telltale click of a kunai blade against its metal casing, and she whirls around just in time to throw herself from the path of a knife thrust at her face. Sota’s eyes are wild, his face beaded with cold sweat. His movements are desperate, but erratic and she ducks another slash, then another, darting out of his way.

“I’m sorry,” the boy whispers, voice ragged, more to himself than to her “I just need to kill you.” She dodges another panicked jap, then another, the kunai wavering in his hand. “I just need to kill you, and I can go home, I just-”

She sidesteps his last flailing attempt to stab her, and her fist connects with his face. He stumbles, reeling from the blow, and in one fluid, well-practiced motion, Kotone draws her own knife from its holster, flips it in her grip, and slashes across his throat.

While she understood the concept, nothing could really prepare her for the **_reality_** of arterial spray. A burst of hot blood spurts into her eyes, blinding her. She can taste iron.

She falls to her knees, guided by the sound he’d made as he fell, and stabs him again, and again. Drives the kunai into his body until it’s safe to stop, until she’s sure he’s dead. Only then does she rub at her eyes with her sleeve and blink the blood away, the blur of the arena slowly coming back into focus.

And then Kotone sees what it is tearing through her classmates.

It’s like being doused with ice water. A chill creeps into her, settles in her stomach, and she’s rooted to the spot, because what she’s seeing can’t be real, and yet she understands immediately that it is. She’s suddenly very aware of the weight of the kunai hanging from her fingers.

There are bodies strewn in his wake, piled and slumped in the dust. The few remaining students throw themselves at him, a swarm, but he’s faster, he’s better, fierce and moving as though possessed. He avoids most of their blows, the ones that do land seemingly unnoticed and unable to impede his momentum. Most attack, but some stay paralyzed with fear. They’re cut down, either way.

She could move if she wanted to. She must be able to. Her body is controlled by her thoughts, after all, and if she wills it to, she can make it do anything she wants. She knows what she should probably do, but the girl doesn’t move, just watches as a kunai plunges into the nearest child’s chest. Then he rounds on her.

He turns from his victim, blood spattered and panting. When his eyes meet hers, it isn’t the feral look Sota had, but something sharp, and clear, and conscious.

And then he stops.

Zabuza blinks, taking in her appearance as if it’s only just registered that she’s there. His eyes trail from her, to the body at her feet and back again, but he doesn’t move, his blood soaked kunai dripping a puddle into the dirt. He’s bleeding himself, profusely, skin ashen and body hunched with the effort it takes to stay standing, to take another staggering step towards her.

She **_knows_** what she should do, but still Kotone looks from him to their kage, awaiting instruction. None come. He’s just observing them, intently, still restraining the other man.

Zabuza sways on his feet, eyes rolling back into his head.

Two kunai hit the dusty ground as he pitches forward.

She sinks to her knees with him as he falls against her, holds him tight. There are stab wounds in his back, lacerations, one kunai embedded so deeply that it’s stuck there. Judging from the blood bubbling from his lips as he breaths, it’s pierced a lung.

There’s no sound as the platinum blond man, hair pulled into a tiny ponytail, hurtles over the railing and falls to the ground. There are no footfalls as he runs over, clearing the whole of the arena in a flash. Kotone’s hold on the boy tightens as the man approaches, clutches his lifeless form closer.

The man’s green eyes are stern but not angry when he looks down at her. “He needs a doctor.” His teeth are ground to sharp points.

Kotone nods, quietly, and relinquishes her grasp, lets the man lift him from her arms.

The room floods with hazy morning light as the door’s wrenched open, the chunin from earlier, and another, drawn back to the arena by the sounds of screaming.

“What the **_fuck_** ,” one of them gapes, eyes slowly panning over the carnage. The other pauses behind him, face similarly horror struck, turning to the older man for an explanation. He doesn’t answer, just passes the unconscious boy to the nearest chunin’s hands.

“The medic’s in today, right? Hurry.”

“Zakuro-senpai,” the woman begins hesitantly, dark eyebrows furrowed. “What Happened here?”

The man, Zakuro, bobs his head quickly in Zabuza’s direction. “He did. Now **_go_**.”

“He did… **_this_** …?” The first chunin starts, glancing down at the bleeding form in his arms and nearly drops him in alarm. The abrupt movement must jostle his injuries, because Kotone hears Zabuza let out a pained breath, little more than a weak rattle. “Forget the medic,” the chunin starts, eyes wide and holding the boy as far from his own body as he can manage. “I say we kill it. Right now.”

Zakuro’s gaze is commanding as he moves closer, into the frightened ninja’s space to loom over him, and the younger man takes a nervous step back. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” he sweeps his arm in the direction of the countless tiny bodies littering the dirt. “But we’re not exactly burdened by an **_abundance of genin_** right now, so I’ll take whatever I can get.” The chunin doesn’t move, so with an exasperated growl the swordsman— and he must be, she knows what those teeth mean— rolls his eyes. “I said **_go_** ,” he hisses through his fangs, and the wide-eyed chunin suddenly realizes that, at the moment, the man before him is vastly more terrifying than the boy in his arms. He turns, rushing from the arena as fast as his legs can carry him.

Kotone stands in place, drenched in Sota’s blood, and shaking from the cold. She just watches the adults as they mill around, just watches the space where Zabuza had disappeared through the doorway. Nothing feels real, dreamlike and detached, as though she’s watching herself the way she had once watched her classmates.

The two chunin look at eachother and then set, earlier than expected, to the task they’d been assigned. They pick over the bodies like vultures, lifting sandals from feet and peeling bloodstained watches from their wrists, collecting it all for the next batch of students. She can hear them chattering amongst themselves, discussing how best to dispose of the bodies, twice as many as they had planned for, and how to send their uniforms back to the village where they would be discarded, or if they were somehow salvageable, cleaned and mended and reused. She knows the ruined ones are destined for a trash bag in a dumpster behind the Mizukage’s offices.

The Mizukage has descended from the viewing platform, robes barely sweeping the loose dust, and she goes to bow low as he passes, but he doesn’t seem to realize she’s there, even when he stops directly beside her. His attention is instead spent taking stock of the slaughter, one eyebrow quirked with faint interest. Kotone just keeps quiet and out of his way, perfectly still and waiting for anything like direction.

“Why didn’t you let me stop this?” Zakuro’s eyes narrow when he turns to their village leader and Kotone braces herself for the inevitable fallout that surely must come with speaking so casually to a Kage. Instead, Sandaime laughs, easily, waving off his concern with a dismissive motion of his hand.

“I wanted to see how he’d fare. An excellent ninja is well worth a hundred mediocre ones, wouldn’t you say?”

The smile Zakuro returns him is strained, pulled too tight and showing too many pointed teeth to be at all considered friendly. “If you say so, Sandaime-sama.”

The other man nods, noting but dismissing the other’s tone, face still reading as mildly amused. “We’re going to have a hell of a time finding someone willing to have that boy as a student. What do you say, Zakuro? Will you take him on?”

“Sure, I will,” the swordsman replies. “Hell, I’ll take all three of them.”

“Three?” It takes her a moment to recognize the voice as her own, a reflexive response to the puzzling statement. Slowly the jonin’s gaze falls to her as though he’s only just noticed her there.

“One,” Zakuro says, nodding his head towards the door. “Two,” he turns his attention back to her. “And three.” Zakuro points straight upwards.

She follows the gesture towards the ceiling. Above, just peeping out around one of the thick rafters, tears streaming down his face, is Neuzumi Hatsuka.

“Is…” his voice is small, from fear and the distance. “Is he gone?”

“He’s gone. You can come down now.” Zakuro calls up to him, and he scoots along the beam to scurry back down to the ground. Pale and trembling, Hatsuka tumbles into the dust and creeps timidly towards them, slowly creeps to Kotone’s side, eyes focused on the wall directly across from him so as not to glance down at the bodies.

“Do you really think you can handle four students, Misao?” The Mizukage’s eyes are still sly, and near mocking.

“Juzo will just have to learn to share me.”

“Ah. Well, I’ll leave you to your pupils, then,” he says, passing by them on his way towards the door. Zakuro makes a vague gesture that could almost be called a bow, the two children quickly following suite, though much more humbly.

The jonin turns to them once Sandaime has disappeared through the doorway, and his attention falls, heavy and menacing, squarely on her.

“You knew that boy.” It isn’t a question.

Kotone nods, and suddenly feels very small. Her stomach has been twisting itself in knots and it tightens now. “His name is Zabuza.”

“I’ve seen him before,” Hatsuka admits quietly, voice barely a whisper. “He’s been sneaking around watching our classes for three years.”

“I have a feeling he had a tad more instruction than that,” their new teacher says, still eyeing her critically. She had shared her training with him. It’s occurring to her now that she’s done something very, very, wrong. She’s quite certain that she’s going to be sick, and if it were possible to will herself from existence right now, she would do it. She just steels herself against whatever’s coming, because she’s broken their rules and people who break the rules need to die, but he doesn’t strike her down, doesn’t even may her much attention once he finally looks away.

“But in all that time, no one else noticed him?” Hatsuka shakes his head, and the man hums thoughtfully. “Sensor type, huh?” Hatsuka nods.

The man introduces himself as Zakuro Misao. Awestruck, she listens as he tells her that, as she’d gathered, he was a member of the Mist’s dreaded Seven Swordsmen, the greatest shinobi the village had at its disposal, though he was soon to retire and pass his weapon down to his protégé, Biwa Juzo. He’ll be training them as genin, and when it registers that Zabuza will be on their team, what little colour had returned to Hatsuka’s face drains away again.

 

_/ / / /_

 

Hatsuka’s parents are waiting for him when they return to the academy.

They’re standing side by side in the antechamber just behind the heavy doors, small for adults. His father has his same dark eyes and wavy hair. His mother is blonde and round, but nonetheless undoubtedly a kunoichi, thick muscle apparent under the soft flesh. He feels their presence long before he sees them, breaking into a skidding run halfway down the precarious, icy trail and throws his arms around his father’s waist. Kotone watches as they all drop to their knees in a close huddle, Hatsuka struggling to cling to both of his parents at once. His mother strokes his hair. It’s all so strange, as alien to her as an unfamiliar custom from a far-away land.

These people are shinobi?

And not just any shinobi, either. Prominent members of the Nezumi clan dot her history notes. The clan is older than the village itself; Ekirei, the blade passed down from one head of the family to the next was forged long before the time of the first Mizukage, deadly poison smelted right into the steel. All share the same prized summoning contract, tracking, spying, or simply overwhelming their enemies with a swarm of rats. One, huge and brown, pokes its head from the depths of Hatsuka’s father’s haori, and something of his usual smile lights his face. He greets it as an old friend.

The boy stops, his momentary return to his usual self fading as quickly as it had come, and he looks his parents in the eye, and then directing his resolutely. “I want to see Momo.”

“I know, Hatsu chan,” his mother’s voice is pained. “You know we aren’t allowed. Not until she’s graduated as well.”

“I don’t want her to do this,” Hatsuka blurts frantically. “I never want her to have to do this… you… you have to take her home. Please. Please, they can’t… they can’t do this to her… **_Everyone’s dead_** …” He’s started hyperventilating again, choking back tears. His mother pulls him close to her again.

His father stands, soft expression turning severe again as he turns to Zakuro. “How did this happen,” he hisses. “Why didn’t anyone **_stop him_**?”

“Apparently, Mizukage Sama found it terribly entertaining.” Zakuro replies in the same clipped tone, mouth quirked in distaste.

On the floor, the blonde kunoichi is still struggling to calm her hysterical child. “It’s over,” his mother says, smoothing down his hair. “It’s all over, Hatsuka. Lets go home.” She looks up, finally noticing the other child standing quietly behind her teacher. “What about you? Where are you headed?”

“Back to Kirigakure,” Kotone answers quietly, still trying to process the Nezumis’ behaviour.

“Yes,” she says gently, like she’s trying to keep from startling some frightened animal, “but where are you _staying_?”

“Oh,” the girl replies softly, head tilting as she thinks. “I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought about it. It’s alright, though. I know lots of good places to sleep outside.”

“There are barracks for ninja in the Village’s main complex,” the chunin at the desk interjects lazily from behind her book. “They’ll take the back-payments on rent from your wages, when you start having some. Oh, and you’ve got a week to return that uniform. You can get replacement standard issue gear in the Mizukage’s office too. Main building.”

Kotone thanks the chunin for her help, but Hatsuka’s mother makes a chiding clicking with her tongue, shaking her head, her soft blond hair swaying gently with the motion. “No, no. That won’t do. Why don’t you come stay with us for a while?” she insists, turning to her son.

Hatsuka peels himself away from his father just far enough to glance, warily, in her direction. He scrutinizes her for a moment, brows furrowed, as if he can’t decide if he’s afraid of her as well. Eventually the boy nods, his innate kindness winning out over his trepidation. “Yeah,” he says finally, voice thick and hoarse from crying. “Kotone-chan should come stay with us.”

Their eyes fall on her, very expectantly and very suddenly. The girl shifts in place, hesitates before opening her mouth to voice a question. Zakuro must have known what it was going to be, because he holds up one hand to silence her. “The boy can stay with me,” he says hurriedly, to her, and then turns to Hatsuka’s father. “I’ll keep an eye on him, Kimaru,” he vows, face solemn. Nezumi Kimaru nods, but his mouth is still drawn into a thin line.

Footsteps echo from down a darkened hallway, and a man Kotone recognizes as one of the medics that sometimes stays at the academy emerges from the shadows just enough to respectfully ask to speak to Zakuro. The swordsman obliges, stepping around the Nezumi family, then around the desk and idling chunin.

She can hear only one half of the conversation, the medic’s voice not quite low enough, but Zakuro is completely inaudible.

“By all accounts, he should be dead,” the medic tells him with a bewildered, helpless shake of his head, and then runs his fingers through his hair. “A normal human child should absolutely be dead after losing that much blood, but he’s alive. Somehow. I’ve done all I can for him here. He should be stable enough to move, now.”

He says something to the doctor, then quickly excuses himself down the same hallway, promising to fetch the two of them at the Nezumi’s residence as soon as they can begin training.

The kunoichi at the desk stops them when the two children start towards their rooms, informing them that there is nothing for them to collect; their things have already been destroyed or reclaimed by the academy.

“Oh wait, though,” she says suddenly when they turn to leave. “I guess there’s still this.” She hauls a beaten cardboard box from the pile of miscellanea heaped behind her desk, and shoves it towards them unceremoniously with her foot. Inside is row after row of identical hitai-ate, engraved with the emblem of the Village Hidden in the Mist.

The chunin leans over the desk to peer into the brimming pile, then to the only two surviving members of their year.

“Huh,” she says, shrugging. “Just grab whichever one then, I guess.”

Hatsuka grabs the headband nearest to him and stuffs it into his pocket.

Kotone plucks one from the box without looking, lets fate decide which is meant for her. She takes a long moment to study the headband, fingertips carefully tracing the four wave-like indentations with a quiet disbelief. The metal and cloth in her hand is the culmination three years’ training, her only objective, her only purpose.

It marks Ume Kotone as a ninja of the Hidden Mist, now and forever.

The young kunoichi shadows the Nezumis as they begin the long walk back to Kirigakure, all the while clutching her cherished forehead-protector close to her heart.

 


	6. Chapter 6

Their house is haunted.

The Nezumi household is hectic. A sprawling, traditional, estate, it lies against the cliffside of the village like an orphaned building from the Kaguya Compound. It's nearly swallowed up by the cramped, towering, structures of the Village's newer buildings, all piled on top of each other in the limited space of the ravine.

The house is huge, but crowded and teeming, and inside it bustles like a rats' nest.

Her husband's sister, Usagi, is married and has six children: two sets of twin boys and two girls, all under the age of five. Hatsuka returns to find his things where he's left them, or taken up by eager young cousins, now dressed in his hand me downs. Momonga's absence is felt like an open wound, gaping and impossible to ignore. Pretty, childish, toys and clothes mark her corner of their shared bedroom and closet.

Children and their exhausted parents tumble and clamber over each other through the tatami hallways, paper screens torn and sliding doors nudged from their runners by roughhousing kids and wobbly toddlers. Mealtimes are pure chaos, tiny hands all scrambling for the choicest bits of dinner, parents struggling to keep their offspring in check, all shouts, and arguments, and laughter.

And through it all, silent as the grave, creeps the little specter that followed them home from the academy. She's conspicuous in every sense, when she's allowing herself to be spotted, deathly pale and raven haired among sunny complexions and light brown waves. She's taller than any of the Nezumi children by far, and it likely won't be long before she's grown into the over-sized standard issue clothing she'd traded for her academy uniform, pant legs bound in linen wraps at her ankles and sleeves rolled up to her elbows. They've insisted that she make herself at home, but it's immediately apparent that she's likely never been at home anywhere, more and more restless as days pass without their teacher calling on them. The girl speaks only when spoken to, polite but voice low, detached and words few. Seemingly preoccupied with something but unable to say what. She can do little more than watch blankly when Hatsuka's oldest cousins try to rope the stranger into some game, uncertain and unaccustomed to the concept of play.

Even without knowing her name, with one look at her eyes, Nezumi Asuka would have known exactly who her father had been. Not just the icy colour or the graceful shape, but the vacant, deadened gaze, weightless and insubstantial.

Ume Gyouten had been in her own year, after all. From what she can remember, he had been a good student, always willing to help his classmates with difficult material, and a particular struggling boy, whose name and face are long lost to her, had been his constant companion. Gyouten was always solemn and serious, carrying the weight of a shinobi family's expectations on his shoulders, but never cold. Not until she'd watched him roll that boy's corpse off himself, a knife driven between the other child's ribs in their desperate, instinctive, struggle for the same blade.

Gyouten is dead, the girl informs them when they ask, and it's only then Asuka realizes she hasn't seen him in years, hadn't even noticed he was gone.

Though visibly relieved to be home, their son is still shaken, and fragile. It's a few days before Asuka and Kimaru feels he's ready to hear they're expecting another baby. He's thrilled for as long as it takes him to realize that this child too is destined for the academy.

"It's just the way things are," she assures her firstborn son. "Death is just a part of life as a ninja. The graduation exam is… It's what's asked of us. Most people can move past that. Some…" she glances over at the girl watching listlessly as a toddler screams over a toy stolen by his twin, her face set in the same haunted expression her father had worn for the rest of his days. "…Some can't. And I don't want that for you. You're going to be the head of this clan one day, Hatsuka. We need you to be brave for us all."

The boy looks up at her, round, dark eyes hesitant but still bright with life and feeling. "For you," he says resolutely. "For all of **_you_**."

Only a single bedroom is left completely untouched, Nezumis young and old avoiding it like a plague. Risu has been away on a mission, and Asuka thanks whatever merciful gods have kept the head of the clan away as long as they have.

The third day after their return, a scrawny black rat scurries across the living room floor as they've gathered there after dinner, and the Nezumis old enough to understand the meaning seem to brace themselves. Nezumi Risu stalks into their home trailing a cloud of noxious smoke, and the room goes silent.

He's a gaunt man, small and bony, eyes and features sharp with his dark brown hair pulled into a short, messy plait. "So," the head of the Nezumi clan grumbles around the cigarette clenched in his teeth, "where's the little coward? Where's my chicken-shit of a nephew?"

"Welcome home, Uncle." Hatsuka replies with a strained kind of civility as he disentangles himself from a previously giggling pile of small children, determined to ignore the barb.

Risu is unimpressed with his demeanour, and sneers. "What I hear," he begins, tone mock-pleasant and biting, "is that you ran up the fucking wall the moment the shit hit the fan. The heir to the Nezumi clan, outdone by a filthy little lightning-blooded bastard. And a girl," he adds, dark beady eyes falling on the misplaced child watching him carefully. He gestures unsteadily, chuckling to himself. "Well. I've got a girl of my own waiting in the wings, don't I? If they're sending a little weakling like you out with Zakuro, you're not going to last long. Hopefully your sister will make a better apprentice than you." He dismisses Hatsuka with a violent, shrugging, wave of his arm and storms clumsily towards his room.

"You're drunk again, Risu." Kimaru admonishes, eyes narrowed.

"Yeah? Well," he furrows his brows in concentration. "Well fuck you, little brother," is all he can come up with before staggering triumphantly away, poisoned katana swaying in its sheath at his hip.

The living room full of rat-nin plus one guest breathe a collective sigh of relief when he leaves, both his suffocating presence and the mingled stench of tar and smoke and sake lifted from the air.

"Does he often come home from missions intoxicated?"

"Huh?" the startled boy turns, to find Kotone addressing him without prompting for the first time in three days. "Oh. Oh, yeah he's usually drunk," Hatsuka admits sheepishly, mouth quirked to one side in a mortified grimace.

"Hmm," the eight-year-old girl hums critically. "Well that's really fucking unprofessional."

There's no way she had meant it to be funny, but Asuka watches her son stifle the first real, heartfelt burst of laughter he's let out since the massacre.

_/ / / /_

When Momochi Zabuza drifts back to the land of the living, no one is more surprised than he is.

Zakuro watches as he slowly shakes off the sedative that's kept him unconscious for days. Primarily, he believes, for the benefit of the staff. Few civilian medics are willing to come anywhere near him, and even the more skittish medic-nin are cautious. He squints against the harsh fluorescent lights, breathes the stinging sterile smell hanging in the air, and immediately begins to take in the rest of his strange surroundings, the sounds the unfamiliar thin pajamas hanging off his bony frame. Judging by his reaction, he's never seen a hospital before. He panics. The boy struggles to get up, to free himself, and starts to claw at the IV line running into his arm.

"Woah, woah, easy there, kid."

The boy stops abruptly, the tubing taught in his grip, and slowly releases it when he realizes he's being watched. He's still disoriented (but if he can move this well already, the medics have clearly done an excellent job), eyes wide and wary as he appraises the strange man addressing him.

"It's Zabuza, isn't it?"

"Yes…" the boy begins slowly, narrowing his eyes. "Who are you?" he demands, voice hoarse from the extended disuse.

"My name is Zakuro Misao," the man replies, smiling easily. "You'll be in my charge for the foreseeable future." He thinks for a moment that the drugs have still left him addled, as his attention seems to drift, but it quickly becomes apparent that he's simply become aware of the nurses speaking in hushed, nervous tones outside of the room.

_…That little thing? Are you sure…?_

_…should be dead after losing that much blood, but…_

_..over a hundred, all dead…_

_…they're saying he isn't human. That he has to be some sort of…_

Misao raises his eyebrows approvingly. Both his penchant and ability for eavesdropping are promising, in a prospective student. They disperse in an anxious flurry when they notice the subject of their gossip observing them, and disappear either way down the hallway.

The boy turns back to him, tone and expression suspicious. "You're really not going to kill me?"

"We're not going to kill you," the swordsman says plainly. "You've got talent; we're going to **_use_** you. And I'll be the one overseeing your training." Not exactly a talkative little thing, Misao thinks to himself as the boy keeps the same uneasy gaze. "I have some questions for you, if you're feeling up to it." The child says nothing, his strength failing as he reluctantly settles back down against the hospital bed. Misao takes this as a yes. "Keep in mind that I've already spoken to the girl."

"No reason to talk to me, then. She'll have told you everything."

"Perhaps," Misao says, shrugging with an evasive sound in his throat. There's a screech as he drags a flimsy metal chair closer across the tile flooring, and eases himself down. "Confirming what I already know, filling in blanks that I don't."

The echoes from the hallway meld into a hazy din outside, voices, machinery, the persistent wail of an unanswered call button. Inside there's a steady blip of a heart monitor and the drone of the fluorescent lights overhead. Misao takes in a slow breath, asks the only question that really matters to him, although objectively, in the eyes of the Village, it's irrelevant.

"Why?"

Zabuza's eyes flicker towards him, and after a long moment, a humourless smile pulls at his lips. "I've heard that's how a guy proves his worth, around here."

Misao quirks an eyebrow. Judging by his contemptuous tone, this is likely the best answer he'll get. "Why spare the girl?" The boy doesn't respond, pretends not to have heard. Misao repeats the question more insistently.

"I…" The boy shrugs uncomfortably, wincing as some stiff join protests the movement. "I know her. Fighting her would be like fighting the rest of them put together, and I didn't have the strength left for that."

"Did she put you up to this?"

The question startles him. " ** _No_** ," he snaps quickly.

"But she taught you, didn't she?"

"No. **_Yes_** ," Zabuza shakes his head, eyes screwed shut, in frustration, in thought, against the painkillers and the bright lights. "I made her do it," he asserts sharply, eyes steely when he meets the swordsman's gaze again. "She would have starved without me. She **owed** me. I **_made her_** do it."

He falls silent again, shoulders hunched and temperament prickly, letting the steady blip of the heart monitor fill the silence. Misao sighs when it becomes apparent he isn't about to say anything more. "She's here, you know."

Zabuza abruptly turns his attention back to the older ninja, blinking in surprise. His expression, for just a moment, before he can reign it in, is hopeful.

"Mhm. When they told me they planned to take you off the sedative, I stopped by and asked if either of your little teammates wanted to come along. Hatsuka— Oh. Yes, Hatsuka. You missed one, by the way—isn't exactly fond of you right now. She was anxious to see you though. She's been here all day. I think they've got her waiting just outside, if you'd like."

The boy's disbelief turns to apprehension, and he shakes his head hesitantly. "Who says **I** want to see **her**?"

"Going to have to deal with her sooner or later. Usually it's just whatever jonin and whatever three genin are available, but it's just the three of you, and just me willing to deal with the three of you, so…" He shrugs, and pulls himself back to his feet. A few strides across the small room takes him to the doorway, and he leans out. A quick whistle draws the attention of the child sitting alone in a waiting area full of hard benches, flipping through some outdated newspaper.

"No— wait— ** _don't_** ," he can hear the boy hissing behind him. Zakuro ignores him, and waves her over.

Kotone (it's an effort to remember her name. She is, by far, the least remarkable of his students) drops the paper on top of the pile of worn reading material whence it came, and hurries over, quick, light footsteps inaudible even on the tile floor.

Her height and her somber disposition makes her seem older than her eight years, and the girl can easily peer over the edge of the high hospital bed. He tries to ignore her, hunkering down into the thin sheets and turning away, but despite himself or simply because she refuses to take the hint and leave, the boy's eventually drawn to glance back at her, bracing himself for the inevitable barrage of questions. It doesn't come.

Her expression doesn't change, but Zakuro notes how she sits up on her tiptoes to lean in closer, and generally seems encouraged by the attention.

"Look," she says finally, pulling her sleeve towards him to show how she's tacked her hitai-ate to it, rather the way Zakuro wore his own. Her eyebrows knit together slightly. "I forgot to get one for you. I should have… They said to take one, so I—"

"I'll get one for him," the swordsman interjects from the place he's taken by the door, borrowed chair drawn away from the two children.

With that, she settles back into contented silence.

The boy speaks up finally, dark eyes narrowed incredulously and his tone uncertain. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to see you," she answers simply, puzzled only that he's asking. "You were in a bad way, before… I wanted to make sure you were alright."

Misao tries not to chuckle to himself outwardly as the boy's scowl deepens. Such a serious little thing. He's trying to scare her away, and it isn't working.

"You've heard what they're calling me, right?" She nods after a moment's hesitation, ponytail bobbing.

"It… I'd do it again, you know," he warns her, the same grim, humorless note in his voice. "I enjoyed killing them. It was **_fun_**."

She just studies him, unflinching, but does incline her head in thought. "That's strange," the little kunoichi admits finally. "I didn't feel anything."

The swordsman isn't surprised, and judging from the boy's reaction, neither is he. It didn't take Zakuro long to categorize her among the many broken shells of weaponized humans Kirigakure counts among its arsenal. He had deemed her useless within moments of meeting her, but it was a small price to pay for the other two. All Zakuro had to do was train her long enough to pass her into the general ranks of their village's forces. She'd be perfect for their Kage's purposes, cannon fodder to be used and discarded and without the sense to care, heartless and soulless and empty. The intended product of the academy assembly line.

"Zabuza?" She shifts from one foot to another, bites at her lip with a pointed tooth. "If… If you hadn't run out of steam when you did, were you…? Were you going to kill me?"

This gives him pause. The boy lets out a slow breath, opens his mouth to speak, then reconsiders, and then again. "Yeah," he says finally. He can't look her in the eye when he says it. Whether it's because he's ashamed or because he's lying, Misao can't yet be certain. He has his suspicions.

A flicker of something like hurt actually passes across her face for only an instant, her eyebrows drawn together and eyes wide. "Oh," she murmurs, directing her gaze to the floor and only glancing up through her dark lashes. "Oh." Kotone takes a measured step back.

"I think that maybe I had um," she begins hesitantly, still intent on studying each scuff and chip in the floor tiles. "I think maybe I misread our relationship, somewhat. I assumed we were friends, and I really shouldn't have. I'm not even sure I'm **_capable_** of— I…" She pauses, looks up at him again and her features sink back into their familiar icy indifference. "I'm sorry for the misunderstanding, and hope our work as teammates won't be affected."

With that, she quietly excuses herself with a quick, polite, bow to her new sensei and then her even strides bring her to the doorway before she pauses again. Zabuza says nothing, expression stony as he watches her leave. "Oh, and," she begins when she turns back towards him, just failing to meet his eye, "Hatsuka is terrified of you. You should be nice to him. I think it would save us a lot of time, as a team." Kotone looks away in earnest again, ducking behind the inky curtain of her hair where it's slipped loose of her careful ponytail, and hurries down the hall.

An uncomfortable silence settles over the room, only the hushed roar of activity outside and the sharp metronome of the heart monitor breaking the stillness. Slowly, so as not to disturb the line intruding in his veins, the little demon rolls away, and shoulders hunched stubbornly, he hunkers down into his bedding.

Zakuro stands with a heavy sigh, writing off the potential for anything like progress today when the surly little genin fails to acknowledge his presence. He returns later that evening to deal with the discharge papers, leaving a stack of small, standard-issue gear on the edge of the hospital bed, and the first unowned hitai-ate he'd been able to find resting on top. There are stares and surreptitious whispers exchanged between hospital staff as they pass, and in the dim city streets the odd ninja gives the same wary, knowing glance as they piece together what must be following him. Villagers part instinctively at the sight of the wave-patterned metal. The boy trails after him like a stormcloud in ill-fitting clothes, silent, and surly and hopping to re-roll a mutinous pant leg or shove an oversized sleeve back up to his elbow.

For all their trepidation, the medics have outdone themselves. There isn't a scratch on the boy anywhere. No scars, no lingering injuries, no outward sign that he'd ever been at death's door.

Something in his eyes, though, marks him as changed. There's an intensity burning there too, a drive, and its in this that the swordsman sees so much promise.

_/ / / /_

Old instincts kick in the moment he steps out onto the familiar village streets, and Zabuza has to stop himself from habitually noting every safe nook or cranny he passes, every unguarded pocket. The shops and stalls are busy, many villagers just wandering home from their day's work, frequenting the little businesses still open in passing. The smell of different foods mingle in the air, a dusting of snow flurries is trampled underfoot, and it's all bathed in the orange glow of the streetlamps overhead, some half lit or flickering, others completely dead.

It's a long walk from the hospital, winding through the main streets and then through smaller, narrower passages lined with older buildings, closer and closer to the mountains marking the edge of the village basin. He recognizes the compound the moment it comes into view.

Zakuro passes casually through the gate of the Kaguya quarter someone he'd once known had so dreaded, past empty manors with boarded windows and overgrown with unkempt foliage. Among the dozen or so abandoned buildings, however, is the occasional lit window, the odd new frame and panel of glass stark against the aged exterior. The man is taking a circuitous route along the wall, Zabuza notes, carefully keeping as far as possible from the occupied houses.

" ** _So close,"_** he hears the older ninja lament under his breath when a door creaks open as they pass. It's hard not to stare at the hulking creature that leans out, appearance only tenuously human, and he ducks to keep from knocking his great round head against the doorframe. Long, bright-orange hair falls down his back and sits atop his head in ornate rolls. Despite his massive size, there's no sound but a curt greeting as he steps out onto the porch. "Fuguki," Zakuro acknowledges in return, tersely.

"So," the man says, his wide mouth splitting into an insincere smile, baring two rows of huge razor-sharp teeth, "this is the 'demon' then?" His eyes trail slowly down to the boy, and Zabuza stands a bit taller to meet the massive ninja's gaze, shoulders squared and eyes narrowed, refusing to cower as he's sure the man's expecting. He notices the defiance, and chuckles to himself.

"Word travels fast," Zakuro muses, eyebrows raised.

"You forget who it is you're speaking to. My business is to know your business." He keeps his tone the same mock-pleasantness, a threatening note thinly veiled. "He's an awfully scrawny little thing, isn't he? You're sure you can make a ninja from that?"

"Well, we're certainly going to try," the older man replies, already turning impatiently to continue the way they had been headed. "Starting bright and early tomorrow morning, in fact, so if you'd excuse us… Come along, Zabuza-kun, we're almost there." He shepherds the boy along, hurriedly. " _Asshole_ ," he mutters under his breath when he hears the door slam shut and he's sure they're out of earshot.

Zabuza follows along, scurrying to keep up with the taller man's longer strides. He makes a face, curiosity weighing on him. "Who was that?" he finally asks.

Zakuro glances down, eyebrows raised in pleased surprise when he speaks up, but his face clouds a moment after. "Suikazan Fuguki. Another member of the Shinobigatana— Ah, right, I should explain. The Swordsmen are—"

"I know who you are." He remembers the notes on the group, laid down devotedly in neat letters and blue pen. Their role, answering directly to the Mizukage, taking the village's most dangerous and illustrious missions, all seven weapons, all carefully drawn out and noted. He's sure she must know something about every owner each blade has ever had.

Zakuro smiles. "We're not all terribly fond of each other," he man continues. "Fuguki, especially, I don't trust as far as **you** could throw. He runs the Intelligence division, a nest of vipers, spiders, and all manner of bottom-feeding creature. Hey, look at that," he says cheerily, "you're learning all kinds of fun things about the village, already. Ah, here we are."

They've stopped in front of a house backed into the farthest corner. It's by far the best-kept of the buildings, restorations matched carefully to the style of the architecture, a single perfect structure among the ruins as though it's misplaced in time. A willow clings to the last of its leaves beside the porch, well-tended bushes, trellises, and an autumn-bared garden bed lining the path. A single plant is in full bloom, lush, deep-red flowers nestled among the foliage, fallen red petals dusting the snow underneath.

"You have **_flowers_** ," the boy states almost accusingly, crinkling his nose in distaste at one of the most feared ninja in their village.

Zakuro glances back at him over his shoulder as he turns his key in the door. "They're camellias," he replies flatly, before disappearing inside.

He's never been inside a house like this before, with its tatami mats and sliding panel doors. Just as he's about to step up the little ledge from the entryway to the house proper, Zakuro's voice drifts from what looks to be the kitchen, reminds him to remove his sandals. The swordsman's warming a pot of soup on the stove when Zabuza pokes his head into the kitchen, the smell slowly coaxing him into the room.

"You can relax, you know," he says without turning around. Somehow, despite Zabuza's seemingly silent footfalls, the man had known exactly where he was. "Go on, sit," he urges when the boy doesn't move. Cautiously he climbs into a kitchen chair, feet nowhere near touching the ground and dangling stupidly. "There we go," Zakuro encourages, leaving the stove to rummage in the refrigerator for a moment. He reaches over Zabuza, sets a hard-boiled egg down on the table in front of him before continuing around to the chair opposite, taking a seat himself and setting to peeling away the shell of his own. "Figured something quick, tonight. You must be starving by now."

There's an ache and an unfulfilled rumbling in his belly, but it's nothing like what he's been used to in the past, nothing he can't ignore. Still, there's food in front of him and he sets to prying the brittle shell from the soft meat inside, trying to ignore the invasive feeling of being scrutinised prickling at him.

Of course, he's used to being watched— she's always had this way of studying people: him, passersby in the street, the cats in the alley, her classmates, anything— just silently, unblinkingly, taking everything in. Not just the tiny details of techniques or any tell of a next move, as he's so adept at doing, but just watches **_someone_** with the same care and detail. Of course, it's never bothered him. She's never made him feel quite as…. **_vulnerable_** as he does now, under the jonin's eye, and it's set him on edge.

Thankfully, before Zakuro can resume his attempts to lull Zabuza into a conversation, there's a knock at the door. Whoever it is doesn't wait for an answer before throwing the door open and stepping inside, the intruder making enough noise, presumably as a courtesy, for their movements to be apparent even from the kitchen.

"Misao," the stranger calls, "you home?"

It's low, and husky, but undoubtedly a woman's voice. A wide smile spreads across the man's face as he stands to meet her. "Ameyuri-chan," he says fondly. "Come in. We've got some soup on, and I was thinking of a pot of tea. Care to join us?"

"I'm just stopping in before leaving on a mission," she replies, finally stepping into view. She's tiny. Her powerful voice had suggested someone much larger, but she barely comes up to Zakuro's shoulder and under the bulk of her baggy, warm clothing he sees spindly wrists and ankles. Dull burgundy hair is pulled into bunches at her temples, and falls down her back. She's pale, and dark circles ring both eyes. The girl can't be more than fifteen, but her teeth have been ground into the same unmistakable points.

"Zabuza-kun," Zakuro says, gesturing between them, "this is Ringo Ameyuri, another member of the shinobigatana. Amyuri-chan, this is Momochi Zabuza. I'm sure by now Fuguki will have told you all about him."

"Hmmm," She eyes him carefully, a grin pulling at her lips, and Zabuza bristles. Between Ringo and Suikazan, he thinks bitterly, it's starting to feel like the whole village is stopping by to gawk at the little demon. "Kaminari blood in him," she appraises, as though he isn't there to hear her, and the boy tenses warily. "If he turns out to have lightning chakra, I may have to steal him from you."

Zakuro's reply is a sympathetic raise of his eyebrows. "Still no luck then?"

"Just the one chunin. He's… he's not ideal, but lightning type chakra is rare." She crosses her arms across her narrow chest, mouth quirked irritably to the side. "I'll start training him soon. Can't afford to waste any time."

The worry in his face deepens, a look of parental concern Zabuza's only ever observed, always directed towards other children. "Yuri—"

She holds out a pale hand flat to silence him. "I have to be going," she interrupts, her other hand resting at one of the branched swords at her side. "My prey isn't going to corner himself, and I can hardly wait to see if he's worth my while."

"Of course," the swordsman says gently, seeing her to the door. "Happy hunting."

"It always is."

Zakuro sighs, heavily, when the door slides shut behind her, slowly makes his way back to the kitchen. He produces two bowls from a cupboard overhead. "They're not all bad," he assures Zabuza, as he sets the two steaming servings of miso soup down on the table. "Ameyuri's vicious, but she's an honourable sort."

He's not sure how someone could be both.

Later that night, Zakuro shows him to the little room he's put aside for the boy, containing a bedroll, a pillow, and another identical set of too-large clothing folded neatly.

"We'll get you something that actually **_fits_** tomorrow," the swordsman promises when he nearly face-plants right into the tatami mat after stepping on the hem of his other pant leg. Then he insists that it's bedtime, and retires to his own room on the other side of the house.

Zabuza grumbles to himself stubbornly as he pads towards the bathroom. He feels as though he's just woken up, but though he isn't **_sleepy,_** a different kind of weariness is weighing him down, one for which he has no name.

Returning to his room, he turns out the light and makes his way towards the fat, thick, futon and blanket through the darkness, tests it with a probing nudge of his bare foot. It's soft, and fluffy, and when he climbs in, he finds himself comfortably warm as he hasn't been since he was orphaned.

Something digs into his back when he rolls onto his side, though, and he remembers pocketing the cloth and metal thing Misao had provided him with. He digs it free, and studies it, scowling.

The forehead protector Zakuro had found for him clearly wasn't meant for a child. The fabric strip is absurdly long, the subtle curve of the metal meant for an adult's skull. He'd tried to tie it on as he'd seen most shinobi wear it, but it had simply slipped down over his eyes.

He moves to toss the stupid thing across the room, but something stops him and instead he sets it down gently by his bedside.

Kotone had been willing to die for this thing. This worthless hunk of metal. 

_Kotone,_ he thinks, sighing and settling back under the quilt. He's been trying to put her from his thoughts all day, ever since she'd finally fled his hospital room. _Good,_ he tells himself, because as the looks of horror he's been getting remind him, he's an unrepentant monster, and demons have no use for attachment, or affection, or **_friends_**. No use for little girls with pale eyes, and almost-smiles, and a worryingly limited understanding of the outside world.

His stomach knots, and it must be the lingering effects of the sedative that's left him feeling so hollow and heavy.


	7. Chapter 7

Morning finds him in a too-brightly lit shop in town, arms crossed and brows furrowed, watching uneasily as Zakuro rifles through racks and disturbs neat piles of folded clothing. He turns, tossing a tshirt in the boy's direction, and the boy flings it back with scowl.

"I'm starting to suspect that you hate everything," Zakuro replies, sighing theatrically as he resumes his search.

"I'll just wear this standard issue crap," the boy protests. "I'll get some of my own when I have money from missions. I don't need anyone taking care of me."

Zakuro stifles a laugh. "Look, I took responsibility for you; I've got to clothe you. Simple," the swordsman replies, gesturing vaguely downwards without bothering to turn around. "Besides, you trip on those and break your face during a fight, you're no good to anybody."

The genin grumbles and glances down, yanking the hem of his pant leg out from where it had become caught beneath his foot. The feeling of being indebted to the jonin has weighted on him since the hospital, but he's coming to accept that this isn't kindness, just part of the agreement. That, he can live with. It's a simple arrangement, the simplest there is: fight for me, and I'll take care of you.

It's a deal he's made before.

He sighs angrily and with a roll of his eyes, starts off through the aisles grabbing items seemingly at random. He trudges over to the register, and stands on his tiptoes to push the bundle onto the counter before the civilian cashier who shies away when he approaches and has been watching Zakuro warily since he entered the shop. "There," he mumbles before stalking off to wait by the door while his sensei picks through the items, eyebrows raised, and then hands the cashier a few ryo.

"I guess that's what scrounging through dumpsters does to your tastes," the swordsman says, clearly too amused with himself, barely a whisper under his breath. His grin widens when Zabuza turns, sharply, and glares at him. "Just testing your hearing," he explains innocently. "Even better than I had hoped."

/ / / /

Zakuro watches the boy dump his mismatched pile of clothing in a corner of his room and immediately start for the door again. He hesitates, though, taking in the haphazard heap in the otherwise pristine space, watches his eyes flicker from the clothes to the empty dresser and then slowly, thoughtfully, takes the things, one at a time, and neatly tucks them away.

He'd seen the demon casing each stall they passed, watched the way his eyes flickered instinctively to unguarded pockets. That the boy was a street urchin is a given; the only questions are how long, and how deep the damage runs. It's abundantly clear, from his fierce assertion of his own independence and complete resentment of anything like sympathy, that the boy is desperate for a sense of control. It's an unfortunate desire in the line of work to which he's now bound.

Zakuro watches as it dawns on the genin that this space is his, to do with as he pleases.

He warms up some fish, rice and vegetables for lunch, watches the boy wolf down the meat and grain, chokes down a few carrots and gives up to simply pick at the greens halfheartedly.

"You're not going to eat them?" he asks, studying the boy carefully as another look of bewildered comprehension spreads across his sharp features.

"No," he says, stunned, a little smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. "No, I'm **not**."

Zakuro's certain that he's never before been in a position to refuse food.

It's a kind of power, and he's savouring it.

The boy's smirk is gone, however, when they approach the Nezumi residence later that afternoon. He'd started off with his typical glowering indifference but hangs back by the time they approach the estate, dragging his feet and averting his eyes.

It's an uncomfortable silence between Hatsuka's home and the training grounds he's reserved for their first lesson. Hatsuka goes pale immediately, eyes wide and ever vigilant as he carefully sets his pace to keep Zakuro between himself and the demon.

Zabuza himself barely seems aware that Hatsuka is present. He is, however, emphatically ignoring his team's kunoichi; less deliberately, she does the same. Zabuza watches her carefully but says nothing, looking away the instant he suspects she may turn her attention to him. When she does, it's in the same way she watches the ninja and civilians they pass in the road; aware of them, but indifferent. He's especially attentive when Zakuro brings them by the Kagyua compound to show the other two children where they might be able to find him outside of training, watching her expectantly, and this in turn piques the swordsman's interest. It's only a fraction of a second but she does hesitate, just as she crosses the gates into the abandoned quarter, breath held and fist clenched, before forcing herself forward.

He shows them the cramped office in the mizukage's complex where missions are assigned, lowly D-ranked missions posted, overflowing, to corkboards along the side— heavy lifting, finding lost or rare things, lost housecats— assorted menial wastes of time. Kotone, at least, pays rapt attention, absorbing every detail and carefully studying the genin-level tasks largely abandoned. She flips through the notices tacked up on top of each other, so absorbed nearly gets left behind when Zakuro abruptly decides it's time to set off for the training field. She would have been, had Zabuza not doubled back to nudge her on the shoulder, just enough to get her attention, and then taken off again before she can respond.

Zakuro watches the exchange, eyebrow raised.

He leads them to the nearest empty training ground, a clearing between moss-covered buildings, a tangle of gnarled trees, and the rocky escarpment at the village's edge. Streams from the mountains pour into waterfalls at the edge, filling ponds that run into channels below the city streets, a perfect place to practice suiton techniques. Upon inspecting his charges, though, it seems as though it will be a while before he's ready to set them to water-style jutsu.

Hatsuka's difficult to evaluate, his movements stiff and clumsy from fear and distraction. Zabuza has enough raw power and ferocity for all three of them, but the extent to which he's self-taught is painfully evident. Kotone is focused, technique precise, but she's reliant on the village's preferred brand of reckless and her chakra molding is shaky at best. He spends most of the day trying to fine-tune Zabuza's unpolished movements and lets the other two train together.

Kotone hesitantly tries to initiate a sparring session with the other genin but she drops Hatsuka in seconds. Kotone helps him to his feet, offers advice on his stance and choice of defence, and Hatsuka, in turn, helps her with ninjutsu techniques.

When Zakuro finally dismisses them for the day, the Nezumi heir can't leave fast enough. He blurts a quick goodbye before darting from the training field as fast as his legs can carry him.

He remembers the day in his third year that they'd first demonstrated an exploding tag. The chunin teaching them that day had leveled a boulder by the seaside, then passed an undetonated slip around for them to examine. Hatsuka can remember the all-consuming tension he'd felt as it passed into his hands, all that destructive force just **_there_** , lying in wait for him to drop his guard and be consumed in a flash of flames and light.

Being around Zabuza is so, so much worse.

At least he knows what set the tag **_off_**.

Hatsuka jerks to a halt, recoiling violently when something touches his shoulder. Kotone blinks at him, eyebrows furrowed minutely as his heartrate declines from its frantic pace. It's a voiceless question and she simply watches and waits for him to explain himself.

"Look, I just…." He pants, feeling how his breath comes quicker the more he dwells on the sound of screaming and the smell of fresh blood, adding to the strain of his sprinting. "I don't think I can do this. Just pal around with that guy like **_everything's alright_** , I—"

" ** _Hatsuka_**." She cuts him off, sharply, though still not raising her voice. Just enough to jolt him out of his own spiraling thoughts. "Zabuza's not going to hurt you. You performance would improve if you would just focus on training. Don't worry about him."

"Easy for you to say," he snaps, voice cracking to a high, panicked note. "He didn't try to kill **_you_** — I," He breaks off with a quick shake of his head, chestnut curls swaying, and buries his face in his hands. "Aw man, I'm sorry. My uncle's right, I am just a coward," he says into his hands, hesitantly peeking through splayed fingers as his breathing slows again and his mind really returns to him.

She's still just watching him quietly, all eerie blue eyes, dark hair, and ghostly pallor. "I don't… really understand what you're feeling," she admits slowly when he fails to continue speaking. "But... I think… it's probably very normal. Sensei doesn't seem concerned by it," she shrugs a little. "I can't say that I understand him. I think, maybe, that I never did. So I can't promise you that he will or won't do this, or that, but if Zabuza wants to kill you, he'll have to go through me first. And I won't make it easy." She pauses for a moment, in thought.

"Besides," she says simply, "you're the heir to one of the village's most prominent families. Zakuro-sensei wouldn't let anything happen to you."

Hatsuka stares at her in disbelief, a nervous peal of laughter spilling out when it registers that she's dead serious about all of it and he while can't decide if that's touching or horrifying, it's definitely a bit ridiculous. This is probably the most he's ever heard her say at once, and really all she's said since returning, withdrawn and preoccupied, from the hospital the day before. He knows enough, though, to understand that it's her attempt to reassure him.

"Come on," he says, smiling wearily. "Let's just go home. I'll be better tomorrow, I promise."

She nods and follows him, stopping after only a few paces.

"Wait—" She says, diverted by something down an alleyway, and he follows her gaze to the grey tabby grooming itself atop a pile of trash. "I think that may be one of the cats listed as missing," she informs him as she steadily begins towards it, face lighting up a little when it mews a greeting and pads towards her. "It's definitely someone's housecat," she says as she scoops the animal into her arms and starts resolutely off in the opposite direction to the Nezumi compound.

He keeps his distance all the way to the dispatch office, carefully out of range of any sudden claws or teeth that might fly in the direction of his face. Cats are surly and not to be trusted, no matter how adorably this one is curling against his equally mysterious teammate. Green eyes and slit pupils track his every tiny movement as the cat rests over Kotone's shoulder, and she flips through the posters with her free hand, finally finding the one in which this exact animal stares impassively out into the lobby from the photo provided.

She's unfamiliar with the layout of the village, and Hatsuka leads her to the address posted, an apartment high in one of the many cylindrical buildings reaching up to the heavy grey sky.

Though generally unflappable, Hatsuka is almost certain Kotone is a little alarmed when the elderly woman who answers the door immediately bursts into tears. The woman rushes to sweep the animal from the kunoichi's arms, burying her face in the soft grey fur and thanking them profusely.

She excuses herself as quickly as she can do politely, giving her their names, and rank, and jonin mentor, so the civilian can report the mission successfully completed. While Hatsuka also turns down the few ryo she offers them as thanks, he does help himself to the generous handful of hard candies she insists that they take, nudging Kotone with his crinkling abundance of wrapped treats until she finally concedes and pops one into her mouth.

"You go ahead home," she says around the candy when they return to street-level, carefully scanning each alleyway and crevice. "I'm going to see if there are any more."

Hatsuka sighs, and trails after anyway.

She finds two more before he finally convinces her to give up for the night.

/ / / /

"Stop, stop," says Misao, waving his hand as he pushes up from the tree trunk he'd been leaning against as he surveyed his students.

Hatsuka and Kotone pause, the boy looking up at him from the grass, still reeling from the throw the kunoichi had been trying to relay to him. Zabuza, far off at the end of the training area that had somehow been understood as his territory, glowers at him, still poised to send a kunai hurtling towards the farthest target.

For the few sessions they had together, it had been this way; Zabuza working alone, resentful of correction but values his skill enough to be reluctantly attentive to it and slowly, he's improving; Kotone and Hatsuka alternating between ninjutsu and taijutsu practice together, the stronger in whichever subject forced to slow to the other's level.

"Zabuza, Kotone, come here."

The boy shoots him an unguarded look that's half horror and half loathing, but discards the kunai with a sharp flick of his wrist and makes his way over as the girl pads closer from her own corner of the clearing. They face each other uneasily, Zabuza focussing somewhere over her shoulder as she stares back, straight through him.

"Hand-to-hand, to first blood," he instructs, watching them carefully, "go."

The girl comes to life when given a task, thousand-yard stare suddenly narrowing only to her opponent. After only a heartbeat's hesitation, she darts forward at a speed Zakuro wouldn't have expected from a genin. Her technique is almost feline in its nimble grace, but her strategy is the same clumsy headlong rush of a suicidal worker bee, and Zabuza knows to expect it.

He avoids her almost instinctually, but only by a hair. Hatsuka's paused from his seat in the grass eyes wide as he watches, both amazed and discouraged as the extent to which his training partner has been holding back becomes clear. Their years of training together apparent in the familiarity of their movements, evenly matched and narrowly avoiding each attack.

Zabuza is more cautious, but no less brutal. He tries to stay out of the taller genin's farther reach, and waits for an opportunity to present itself, but when he does attempt to land a blow his movements are merciless and efficient.

He hazards an elbow to her face, not really meant to connect, but to keep his distance. Instead, he feels the crash of bone on bone and the ground swept away beneath his feet.

Zakuro can see it plainly, the jonin's eyes well adapted to the swift movement of clashing shinobi, let alone beginners. She could have avoided it easily if only she had retreated, but the girl had traded her chance to evade for the opening he'd left her, and followed through with a throw.

"Stop," Zakuro groans, head in his hands, and the two grappling children still. "Zabuza wins," he informs the kunoichi as he hauls her to her feet. She looks up at him searchingly. "Kotone. Your face."

"What? I- Oh." She says as she pats at the bruise forming over her nose and her hand comes away bloody. It doesn't look broken but still there's blood trickling profusely from the abused area.

"Go clean yourself up and we'll try it again," Zakuro sighs, waving her away towards the water pooling at the edge of the clearing.

He makes a note of the way Zabuza watches her leave, perhaps simply stunned from a hard impact with the cold ground, but it takes him a second longer than it should to pull himself to his feet and he's preoccupied with scrubbing her blood from his sleeve. And while it could always just be fatigue, Zakuro swears the boy pulls his punches for the rest of the day.

Still, Zabuza splits her lip open the second time he pits them against each other, starts her nosebleed back up again the third. Zakuro's not sure there's any point trying, but the swordsman drags the kunoichi over to the pool himself.

"Why do you keep losing?" he asks firmly.

"I'm sorry sensei," she replies immediately. "I'll train harder. I'll—"

"Not what I'm asking. **_Why_** do you keep losing?" He rolls his eyes and relents when she looks lost and perhaps a little dismayed. "Alright, let's try it this way. Why did I make the matches to first blood?"

"I don't know, sensei," she admits quietly, still pinching the bruised bridge of her nose.

Honestly he can't be sure either one would give up otherwise and doesn't want his students to kill each other or themselves his first week as sensei. Kotone is still trying to staunch the bleeding and while she hadn't managed to draw blood herself, he can tell already that Zabuza will be bringing home an impressive patchwork of burgeoning bruises, a notable dark patch forming along one cheekbone. "Because," he explains to her very slowly, "you would rather take a hit than take the time to block or dodge."

"I saw an opening…" she explains, voice dropping to a sheepish whisper.

"Kotone, if you get hit in the face it wasn't an opening." He shakes his head in frustration. "Look, I know Relentless Attack is what they teach at the academy, but I'm telling you now that's going to get you killed." She doesn't seem to understand why that should deter her, though he does see slight improvement in their next training session, if only because he had asked it.

"Well," he begins, all three children watching him carefully when he has them assembled the next evening, waving a scroll enticingly before their faces. "This," he begins theatrically, "is your first mission. Now, honestly, D ranked missions are tedious and demeaning. If I'm going to bother with them I'd rather get as many over and done with as I can, at once. There are a number of missions available right now from clients looking for rare medicinal plants from the mountains. I've consolidated six different missions," a flick of his wrist uncoils the scroll, and it unfurls to roll across the frosty grass, the key feature a map with a long meandering route traced out in red ink, regions of interest circled. "One route, three days, we're leaving first thing in the morning. Pack warm, guys."

"Oh, and Kotone, Hatsuka," he interrupts, eyebrows raised, as they start towards home. "Why is it that, when I went to register for what should be your first mission, you're already listed as having completed three, and she's got _**seven**_?"

Kotone gets that wide-eyed look he's come to realize means she thinks she's displeased him somehow, one of the only way her expression ever really changes.

Hatsuka notices it as well, springing into action with a kind of ease he hasn't been able to exhibit before. Reassuring her reassures him, for a moment believable in his role as eldest brother to a legion of siblings and cousins. "Kotone-chan goes out at night and finds lost cats," He answers before she's forced to flounder, shrugging casually. "I went with her once."

"They belong to someone," she explains softly. "Somebody wants them back."

/ / / /

He's been doing better.

For the last few days, Hatsuka has actually managed to focus during training, to ignore the other boy on his team and the demon lurking just beneath the surface. And although he's been keeping his distance, he manages the day spent hiking up the mountain, pack loaded with warm clothing and provisions, just fine. It helps that he can keep Zakuro and Kotone between them, helps that he's seen it for himself that she could hold her own against him if it ever came to that.

It gets colder and the snowdrifts lining the path grow higher as they climb. Zakuro stops them at each area of interest and they scurry up trees for berries or bark, dig up roots and strange tubers of odd-looking plants. High in the mountains they find a series of deep caves, and spend the rest of the day searching for rare mushrooms or scraping frozen lichens and moss from rocks. For each client they have a list of desired specimens and quotas, and Zakuro hands the lists to Kotone to sort through before sending the boys back in to explore and collect. She accepts the task without complaint, but when Hatsuka turns, he sees a longing in her eyes as she watches them leave.

His stomach had lurched for a moment, but thankfully the cave forked just at the mouth and Zakuro mercifully directed them down either side. Still, he tells himself as he skitters down a steep incline, darting between stalagmites, he could have done it. He's a genin, a ninja, and he can manage his fear well enough to function alongside Zabuza.

He's much less sure of this when night falls.

He feels vulnerable in the dark, curled in his bedroll near the extinguished campfire Zakuro had started near the mouth of the cave. Zabuza's settled himself at the far end of the cavern, Zakuro and then Kotone between them, but every time Hatsuka tries to will himself unconscious, he becomes aware of every tiny sound, every rustle of movement that could be an approach with murderous intent. It's a very long night, spent clutching a kunai and waiting for dawn.

It isn't the worst night he's had, but it it's likely the second.

He's clumsy through the next day, limbs heavy and stomach churning at the sight of food, retching occasionally as his body tries to vacate his already empty stomach. He can't wait for them to call it a night, convinced that he'll be able to pass out the moment he's horizontal but it's as though he's missed his window of opportunity by fighting to stay awake all day. Again, he tosses and turns, gets up to walk around, goes back to bed, fails to doze off and starts the whole process over.

"Hey, Zabuza," Zakuro begins after Hatsuka accidentally wakes them all again during his third bathroom break of the night. "Do you plan on killing Hatsuka in his sleep?"

"No."

"See? You're fine. Go to bed. "

It doesn't help.

Kotone very helpfully offers to knock him unconscious, but he politely declines, and again Hatsuka finds dawn spilling between the trees before he manages to fall asleep.

/ / / /

He's not exactly sure when he collapsed, but the last thing he remembers is his chakra failing him halfway up a mossy tree trunk, and the next thing he knows, the village is in view. Disoriented, it takes him a moment to decipher the way the world is gradually flowing past him, the solid warmth of whatever he's holding, whatever soft stranded thing it is tickling his cheek.

"Are you awake?"

The thing swishing across his face is Kotone's ponytail. She's carrying him on her back, trailing far behind the other genin and their sensei, both of which he can see have an extra pack slung over their own shoulders. She's a head taller than either of her teammates, with the longest strides, but she's moving slowly to keep him from toppling off.

Blood rushes to his face, hot embarrassment against the cold air. Hatsuka's head starts to spin when she crouches to let him off, and it isn't until the village gates and their keepers are in view that she carefully sets him down, before anyone can see and report this weakness to his parents (or worse, his uncle).

They pause there before going their separate ways, Hatsuka fighting to keep his eyes open and honestly too tired to care if Zabuza's watching contemptuously.

Zakuro's going to the Mizukage's offices to complete the necessary paperwork and hand over their collections, motioning for Zabuza to follow, but the boy hesitates for a moment. He and Kotone lock eyes, watching each other expectantly, but when he says nothing and neither does she, he just tosses her backpack to her and skulks away after their teacher.

He stumbles home, Kotone quietly shepherding him along, and sneaks him into his room. He's unconscious before he hits the bedroll, finally falling into a deep, dreamless sleep, and she must not have said anything about his performance because the next thing he knows, his father is gently nudging him awake to congratulate him on his first real mission, and let him know how proud he is.

"Thanks," he mumbles into his pillow when he hears the rustle of the kunoichi's borrowed futon hours later. "For not telling everybody how badly I screwed up, today."

"Why would I do th—"

"You're a really good friend, Kotone-chan," he interrupts, smiling sleepily, and she stops, suddenly, and quiets for a long moment, the only sound the soft murmurs and sighs of his sleeping cousins filling the rest of the floor.

"Thank you," she breathes, so quietly he can hardly hear her.

/ / / /

Just as morning creeps across the compound yard, a sharp rap at the window wakes both genin, and sends a shockwave of reluctant groans through the younger children as they bury their faces in their pillows and try to drown out the sound. He could get in if he wanted to, but as a courtesy Zakuro waits for Hatsuka to slide the window open before he leans inside.

"New mission," he informs them cheerily. "Pack for about two weeks and meet us at the village gate by noon. I've already filled your parents in, Hatsu-kun," and with that he disappears again.

" _Already?"_ Hatsuka mouths at her, scandalized, but Kotone is already picking through the storage bin she's been allotted for her things.

There are three civilians waiting by the gates when they arrive, two men and a woman, all dressed plainly and carrying sturdy black cases. The woman's eyeing Zabuza uneasily, and he's glowering back at her from beneath the shadow cast by the great wooden doors.

"Still waiting on one more," Zakuro informs them, and introduces the two new arrivals to their clients. Their names, Misao tells them, are Goro, Jiro, and Etsuko: a troupe of musicians needing protection on their journey to perform at a music festival sponsored by the Daimyo of the Rain Country.

"Since we've gotten all that D ranked garbage out of the way, I thought why not go for a C?"

Beside him, Kotone nods, though without the enthusiasm he would expect from the offer of a more important mission. He gets the sinking feeling that there's something he's missing, because she keeps glancing in his direction, then to Zabuza, like she's waiting for something, and though he doesn't look over to notice, there's a frown drawing across the other boy's face as well.

"Wait," he says slowly, pushing himself to his feet. "The Land of Rain is –"

"Not involved in the war," Zakuro interrupts a bit too cheerfully, showing just a few too many sharpened teeth. Zabuza moves closer, eyes narrowed defiantly, and hisses back in a whisper their clients won't hear.

"It's bordering three that are—"

"Didn't take you for a coward, Zabuza Kun," their sensei replies, the veneer of his enforced liveliness wearing thin over the warning edge in his tone. "So what if our C mission's more like a B. We can handle it."

"I'm not **_scared_** , but dragging three civilians through a war zone for a stupid music festival—"

"Zabuza, _**shut up**_ ," Zakuro snaps, the boy startled by the sudden change in tone and click of sharpened teeth, and he's drawing a breath to continue when something catches his eye and his demeanour shifts again. "Ah, there you are Juzo. Looks like we can get going."

The man who meanders over is likely in his late twenties, with drooping, watery eyes that give him the look of a beleaguered hound dog. Hatsuka's not sure if it's a tattoo, or paint, or what, but there's markings like a cage over his jaw, as though to hold back his sharpened teeth. It's the thing slung over his back that really draws stares, though: a blade made up of a massive slab of razor sharp metal. The thing Misao had passed down to him, from master to student.

The civilians each take an instinctive step back when his eyes fall on them, and then he turns his attention to each of Zakuo's genin in turn. He's an imposing figure, but Hatsuka keeps from shrinking as he's evaluated for a moment, his eyes passing similarly over Kotone, and then settling heavily on Zabuza.

"Hmmm," he says to Zakuro drearily as their company starts down the road. "So that's him, then. He's already got quite a reputation for himself."

Zakuro raises an unimpressed brow. "Oh yes. The mushrooms were all terrified. He brutalized those lichens, it was awful."

Zabuza's a fair ways ahead, but Hatsuka can tell from the way the boy's shoulders tense indignantly that he can hear them.

"Right now he's being very, ** _very_** stubborn," Zakuro adds, conspicuously loud, "and needs to just _**do**_ the mission he's been _**assigned**_."

It's slow going as they make their way to the coast, and then north, where they take a ferry to the most north-western of the Land of Water's surrounding islands, and from there towards a port town where Zakuro had arranged passage to the mainland aboard a freighter returning to the Land of Steam. The civilians need to stop with alarming frequency, ducking into every teahouse and rest stop along the way to warm their hands and rest their feet.

Zabuza's hitai-ate keeps slipping again, as it always does. It inches downwards, and then reaches some tipping point where it slides down all the way to the bridge of his nose, over his eyes. The boy's already in a foul mood, and the third time it happens he growls and shoves the offending headband up past his forehead, off kilter, and waits irritably for it to slip again. It doesn't. He leaves it that way, the band's too-long tails hanging down to his shoulder. 

Hatsuka stifles a laugh in the palm of his hand. If only for a moment, it's hard to find him intimidating.

He also can't help but notice an unusual normalcy in their team's kunoichi. They were all still wary of Zabuza, but Kotone orbited them constantly, forcing a warmth to her voice and faking a smile, the most talkative Hatsuka'd ever seen her. Zabuza keeps glancing back at the beaming girl that was supposedly their teammate, bewildered and mistrustful.

"I really like your nails," she tells Etsuko, carefully examining the lilac coloured lacquer, each shaped into a delicate point. Her own hands are stronger, calloused and bruised, nails uneven and short.

"It's you."

Hatsuka jumps, not having noticed the other boy come up beside him, though his attention's on the two females. Hatsuka stammers something unintelligent to relay his confusion, both at the statement and the fact that Zabuza's actually talking to him.

"She's imitating you," he clarifies.

From the back of the group, Etsuko seems to notice she's being watched, and clutches the case holding her shamisen a little tighter.

"And you're all siblings, aren't you?" she asks Goro when they stop to eat. They all have the same jet black hair, the same pale skin, spindly limbs and pinched features. She asks him all about his Kokyu, Jiro's drums, Etsuko's shamisen. How long he's been playing, how they work, where they've performed, and they're happy to oblige her, though their responses are halting and punctuated with many thoughtful sounds. They play for a while, to pass the time on the freighter, and Hatsuka applauds and cheers emphatically.

Ultimately, they reach Yu no Kuni on the third day. It's like spring there, sun shining and air comfortably warm. The terrain is smooth road through forest, mountains far in the distance, and though reluctantly, the musicians agree to make camp along the roadside for the night.

When their clients are distracted by dinner and their campfire, Kotone very quietly gets to her feet and steals away from the group. Hatsuka doesn't notice until Zabuza pauses between bites of his rations, and quietly follows her as she makes her way towards their teacher and his older student. Against his better judgement, Hatsuka stands too, reassuring the three civilians that he'd be back shortly.

Zakuro and Biwa are in the nearest clearing, the young man chopping firewood with the great, heavy blade while the older jokes with him about misusing priceless historical weaponry.

"Zakuro-sensei," she begins quietly, her voice her own again. "May I speak to you for a moment?" She hesitates when she notices the other genin approaching, but Zakuro urges her to continue.

"Sensei, I…" She takes a deep breath. "I don't think they're musicians."

Zakuro raises his pale eyebrows and exchanges a look with Juzo.

"I mean," she continues, "there were no marks on Etsuko-san's fingers from the strings. They would have to travel a lot, but they don't seem used to walking, they can play but they're completely reliant on sheet music, and when I asked them where they first performed, they all told me different stories, even though they're a family group and— and…" Zakuro's expression is amused. "…and you already knew that." He nods, but pauses, waiting. "And… that's why he's here too, isn't it?" Juzo acknowledges her with approving nod in passing as he makes his way back to the campfire with the freshly split logs to watch over their charges.

Their teacher sighs, and passes a hand over his platinum blond hair. "A few weeks ago, Konoha-nin tried to assassinate the Water Daimyo's oldest son. Now," he holds up a hand to silence the startled string of questions that had immediately popped to the forefront of Hatsuka's mind. "They failed, as I believe was their intention. The evidence suggesting Konoha ninja seems to have been planted, and upon further investigation, we believe it was an attempt by Iwagakure to bring us into the war and pit us against their enemies." He shrugs. "Anyway, there's a bit of worry about the safety of the Daimyo's residences right now. These guys are nieces and nephews of the Daimyo, more rigorous protection's been arranged for the direct line. So we're taking them to stay at the Rain Daimyo's palace, where they're convinced they'll be safer. He's their uncle, or cousin, or something. All nobles are related somehow or other."

Beside him, the look on the other boy's face is pure outrage. He hisses, "That's the stupidest—"

" _ **I don't want to hear it,**_ " their teacher snaps. "Like I said. Sometimes your clients will be idiots, but you advise them as best you can, and if they insist that it's what they want, and they pay, you ** _do it_**. Alright, so our B's more like an A, but Juzo and I could handle this by ourselves, and I thought I should let you come along for the experience; don't make me regret that decision." He shoots the boy a last warning look before joining Juzo back at the campfire, Zabuza casting a surly glare at the back of his head.

Kotone starts back towards the campfire, hesitating when she passes between both boys. She makes a small sound, and it's just a fleeting motion, a twitch, but she raises a hand, as though she might set it on his shoulder, but reconsiders. She lowers her eyes and withdraws.

/ / / /

They make it halfway through the Land of Fire before they encounter their first Leaf nin, a limping, bedraggled bunch of chunin, patched up and weary, returning from the front lines to seek more thorough medical attention in their hidden village.

Zakuro hears them long before he sees them, dismissing Juzo with an urgent motion of his head. The man disappears into the treetops, deadly quiet.

"Shouldn't we hide too?" Hatsuka whispers nervously, looking up at the jonin, who just shakes his head and instructs his students to follow his lead.

"We're nowhere near their village; we aren't **actively** at war with Konoha. It's fine," He assures them, speaking especially to the nervous royals huddled in fear. "And they're all half dead, if it comes to that."

Slowly, they approach, and Zakuro raises a hand in a lazy greeting. Zabuza's hackles are up immediately, muscles tensed and primed for a fight. The jonin clamps a hand down on Zabuza's shoulder, gripping with more force than his easygoing tone would suggest, to keep the boy in in place.

"State your business here, Mist-nin," the least damaged of the leaf nin challenges, eyes narrowed.

Zakuro introduces himself as the jonin sensei of three genin, calmly relates the manufactured story of the music festival, is more than happy to let them examine the instrument cases to find nothing inside but the innocuous instruments. Begrudgingly, the chunin find nothing untoward, and move on, Hatsuka and the civilians releasing a heavy sigh of relief, Juzo dropping back down to the road.

Their voices carry, though, and Hatsuka's sharp, Kirigakure-trained, ears catch them whispering to each other as they leave. Something about inhumane training, and dead eyes, and Bloody Mist. Something about a massacre. Something about it serving them right.

There are occasional passers-by, farmers or merchants moving wares, simple travelers, but more and more as they approach the border of the Land of Grass, it's civilians fleeing the encroaching front line with their belongings on their backs and their children in their arms. Besides the fighting between shinobi, they tell them, bandits have taken over the destabilized territory.

They pass through a heavily wooded area, the mountains making up the last stretch before crossing into the Rain Country rapidly approaching.

"Did you hear that?" Kotone whispers to Hatsuka. He handn't, because he'd been too engaged trying to convince Goro that rats were actually very clean animals rather than vermin, but Zabuza's stopped in the road ahead.

"Maybe it was just a bunny or something," Hatsuka offers, hopefully.

"I don't think so…"

Up ahead, the jonin are unconcerned, even as the ragged shapes of men armed with knives and farming tools break up the underbrush and step into the light on all sides. One that must be leading them comes forward, demands they hand over their valuables.

"Hmm," the unkempt man grins, studying their clients intently. "Bet there's family money to go with those fancy instruments, eh boys? Bet somebody'd pay a real good ransom for these three."

The three huddle together, Goro and Jiro flanking their sister. The genin ready themselves for a fight, surrounding the three of them in turn. Zabuza draws a kunai, Hatsuka palms a handful of shuriken, Kotone readies her fists.

Misao is unimpressed. "Ok, here's how this is going to work," he drawls. "You dumbasses back off, and you get to live."

A rough ripple of laughter passes through the dozen or so bandits, and Zakuro sighs theatrically. "You guys won't want to watch this," he assures the fake musicians. "They want to do this the messy way."

"What, I'm supposed to be afraid of an old man and some kids?" their leader says between bouts of incredulous laughter, gesturing to them with his ax. "The young guy's still one man against twelve. Real intimidating knife you've got there pal. All show, I bet. Bet you can't even lift the stupid thing, can you?'"

As it turns out, he can. And he does.

Juzo moves so quickly that the bandits are still laughing amongst themselves when his blade crashes into the mossy ground.

The bandits's torso falls one way; his legs, the other.

They stop laughing.

The bandits either gape or roar in outrage, rushing the mist nin with reckless fury. They avoid Juzo and the deadly sweep of the Executioner's blade, targeting the children or Misao. One of them tries to grab Kotone, mistaking her for an easy bit of leverage, and she lets him. When his hand closes around her forearm, she grabs him, and flips him, her much smaller size outweighed by perfect technique, and she drives his head into the ground so hard his skull cracks open.

Hatsuka flings his fistful of shuriken carefully and hits the nearest bandit, who screams as a metal point embeds itself in his eye. To his right, Zabuza's got a kunai embedded in a huge man's neck and Hatsuka launches forward to finish the blinded outlaw, similarly.

His brain is processing the fight at breakneck speed, taking in the soft, vulnerable skin of his throat, exposed by his writhing in agony, and though the blade's in his hand, he can't bring himself to use it. He freezes, window of opportunity sailing by, as the man's frantic flailing sends a hastily-thrown fist right into his midsection, knocking Hatsuka to the ground and the air from his lungs.

Winded and reeling, he's helpless when a different bandit crouches over him, kama raised, cruel curved edge shining in the dying evening light. Suddenly, it falls from his hands, sticking dangerously close to Hatsuka's face, catching a few wavy strands of brown hair. The man lets out a wheeze as he topples over, Zabuza yanking a knife from his spine, and a moment later Kotone is gently helping him to his feet. Between the two other genin, Misao, and Juzo hacking through them three at a time, the bandits all lie dead, their charges shaking, but unharmed.

Zakuro orders Kotone to guide them well away from the scene of the slaughter as quickly as possible, and sends Juzo along with her to be safe. He kneels next to the Nezumi boy, who's breathing heavily and wide eyed, as the same panic resurges.

"I'm sorry," he stammers. "I couldn't do it, I froze up, I… I…"

"Hatsuka," Misao starts carefully, waiting until the boy looks up at him and stops staring frantically into the road beneath his sandals, nudges him into a slow walk away from the gore and bloodshed. "It's alright. Everything was ok. You have a good heart, Hatsu-kun, a gentle one, a caring one…. That's a good thing. But you need to leave that heart at home, with your family. You need to separate the you that's afraid, and the you that's on a mission. Almost everyone struggles with it— it's why Black Ops. Shinobi, who see the worst missions, wear masks, after all. Can you try and do that? To protect your teammates and your clients."

"I— I'm so sorry…" he repeats, nodding. "I'm sorry. I wish I wasn't such a coward… I… I wish I could just not have feelings, like I'm supposed to, like—"

"No," Misao stops him sternly, as they approach the rest of the group much further along the path, Zabuza just ahead. "You have to stop comparing yourself to Kotone. It's better that you are the way you are, Hatsuka. There's a difference between being brave and never being afraid. You can only learn bravery if you are scared. Someone like Kotone wouldn't know what to do with fear, wouldn't be able to overcome it. There is something wrong with that girl, and it's no way to live—"

" **She can hear you**."

Zabuza's stopped and rounded on them, dark eyes blazing fury, and it's replaced with a mortified, dawning comprehension as he realizes that he's said it.

Kotone's staring at him, eyes wide and eyebrows pulled thoughtfully together.

His mouth works soundlessly for a moment but he tries to shrug off the outburst and continue down the path, but Zakuro grabs him by the arm and drags him back.

"I let you eavesdrop on my talk with Hatsuka," he hisses furiously through sharpened teeth, "because this applies to you as well. Anger is as dangerous as fear, Zabuza. It's transparent: you're very clearly a barely contained ball of rage and resentment. I knew that when I took you on— anger is good too, means you care about something. But there's the kind that fuels you and the kind that makes you _**stupid**_. And I've seen a hell of a lot more of the latter from you than the former." The boy starts to protest, hands ball into fists at his sides, but he says nothing. "You think you're the only one who's angry? You keep it in, and you wait for the right moment. That's how you live long enough get some use out of it. Are we clear?" The demon stares back obstinately, jaw clenched. "Are we ** _clear_**?"

"Yes, Zakuro-sensei," he replies, aiming for restrained but voice still tinged with bitterness.

Zakuro shakes his head as he strides away, muttering something to himself.

Zabuza seems to remember that Hatsuka's still standing there, rooted to the spot, and shoots the other boy a warning look before stalking off, himself.

It doesn't have the effect it would have had a week earlier.

/ / / /

They spend a night in a shallow cave worn into a cliff side. The Daimyo's relatives are asleep, though fitfully, touched by the day's violence. Hatsuka wakes up to the buzzing of some insect around his head, and has to sit up to swat it away properly, and checks the time, still well away from the shift he's been assigned standing guard outside the cave.

In fact, it's still Zabuza's turn, and he can see the dark shape of the other boy against the moonlit plateau.

Slowly, Hatsuka stands, stepping carefully over Kotone and around Misao to the mouth of the cave. Zabuza's eyes flicker towards him briefly, then return to surveying the surroundings.

"Uh… hey? I'm just… going to take a leak, so…" He receives a non-committal grunt in return, but it's not nothing. "Actually, can I talk to you for a minute?" He just goes ahead and invites himself to sit beside the other boy. "I uh… I got some good news before we left on this mission. From my dad," he starts, and continues when Zabuza doesn't seem inclined to respond. "So they're changing the way the academy runs. It's just going to be a test now, to pass. For real. Because they need more genin, so… so my sister's going to be safe. And everyone else in her year, and my cousins', maybe even my little brothers' too, when he's old enough." Zabuza turns his attention to the other genin, expression unreadable. "I don't think you meant to make that happen," Hatsuka adds softly. "But you did, so…" he shrugs.

Zabuza shifts further along the side of the cliff, keeping his eyes away from Hatsuka, but Hatsuka is undeterred. "Why did you do it?" He doesn't expect an answer so he sits up in surprise when he gets one.

"I don't know," the other boy replies wearily. "I wanted to hurt him, and I couldn't, so I did the next best thing. I just wanted to take something from him."

Hatsuka blinks at the other boy, something slowly beginning to make sense. "Oh."

"It.. It was because they turned me down when I tried to join," the boy insists quickly. "I wasn't good enough for them, so I took out everyone who supposedly was. That was why."

"Yeah, of course," the smaller boy says, unconvincingly. Slowly he pushes himself to his feet, wanders towards the cave. "You're not so bad, you know," he says before ducking back inside, a skeptical little chiding sound his only reply.

Hatsuka goes back to his bedroll, and sleeps as soundly as he would at home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok so I have one chapter left that's already written, and then we'll be all caught up~


	8. Chapter 8

The last stretch to the Daimyo's palace is all smooth sailing. There's a single thwarted attempt by a different band of bandits, Zakuro catching hushed voices from rocky ledges above, and the telltale scrabbling of displaced pebbles, but they withdraw almost immediately. Just as long, Zakuro presumes, as it took them to get a look at Juzo and reconsider.

Zakuro is always watching his students closely, looking for anything he might exploit or encourage to achieve the results he wants. Zabuza, especially, he's been observing since their training began, careful of anything that might help control the unruly demon.

He's a secretive little creature, but he's still just a boy, defenseless against a veteran jonin's well-trained perceptions. While they still aren't speaking, the boy is preoccupied with their team's kunoichi— always cautiously aware of her movements, attention keyed to the sound of her voice. They're small movements, just a reflexive flicker of his eyes, but with yesterday's outburst as context it's difficult to interpret as a coincidence.

Misao has preferred to keep Zabuza on a short leash whenever it's been feasible, sending Hatsuka and Kotone out together when he needs something done, but it's possible that the limitation's only breeding resentment, and Hatsuka seems to be done cringing whenever the other boy moves. On a hunch, he changes his strategy.

The boy's startled for a moment when Zakuro casually directs Kotone along with him to scout ahead. He expects more of the usual opposition, and he can see the boy's jaw working to form some indignant protest, but he keeps quiet and stalks off after her. He has them working side-by-side for the rest of the day, though there's nothing between them but a lopsided silence, terse on his side, listless on hers. Perhaps it's because speaking next to her is too much like speaking **_to_** her, but he's unusually short on complaints and objections in general. She placates him, Zakuro notes with an amused little smirk, like stabling a tempestuous racehorse with a well-mannered donkey— enough of an influence to keep him manageable, not enough to dampen the edge Zakuro so values.

When given the choice of company, though, the girl's tethered herself to Juzo, following along beside him and pestering him with an endless string of questions. She's dropped the sweet and friendly act, comfortable enough in the presence of other shinobi to drain all the warmth from her voice and be her lifeless little self, unhindered. He supposes she and Biwa are something of a matching set, that way.

While she's indeed studying it carefully, the sword itself is incidental. She wants to know about the missions he takes, the places he's been, what it's like to answer to the Mizukage himself. It's largely classified, but the less he's allowed to tell her, the more intrigued she seems.

Through the mountains they pass into a low-lying valley, waterlogged and swampy from heavy rain the day before. The sky is grey overhead, but their clients don't have to contend with anything more than muddied hems and the occasional fleeting drizzle that isn't unlike the weather at home during the spring. Which is fortunate, as that alone is enough to provoke bitter complaints and lamentations from the delicate nobles.

Soon enough the Rain Daimyo's palace is visible in the distance, smaller than the Water Daimyo's residence, but an extravagant fortress none the less. The castle's keepers are expecting them, and the moment the great heavy door is pulled aside, the kiri-nin and water-country nobility are shepherded inside by guards. Though they'd been perfectly happy to hand-off their clients and be on their way, a well-dressed man, Oshiro, who seems to be running the household staff, is emphatic that they at least let the Daimyo's kitchens feed them as thanks, and Zakuro isn't about to turn down a hot meal when their rations are beginning to wear thin.

The servant's only stipulation is that, as a standard precaution, they leave any weaponry on their persons outside in the courtyard, to be returned on their way out. The swordsman shrugs and complies, watching as his young students warily follow suite, but Juzo makes it abundantly clear that they'll only take the head-cleaver from his cold, dead, hands, and insists on waiting outside.

"Fine," Zakuro tells him good-naturedly, as he empties his various hiding places of stashed weaponry, handing them off to a nervous-looking guard. "You be a spoil-sport, and we'll be back soon."

The unfortunate servant that approaches Zabuza likely believes that the children will be safe enough to approach. The boy bristles as his space is infiltrated, and the civilian shies away at the near-feral growl he receives as a warning. Zakuro clears his throat conspicuously and narrows his eyes in his student's direction. "Do you remember what we discussed the other day? **_Control yourself_** ," he prompts and the boy reluctantly allows the now-shaking servant close enough to take the few knives he's carrying, who then hurries to the safer-looking children.

Kotone undoes the standard-issue holster, appropriately stocked with the recommended standard-issue gear, around her thigh and hands it over obediently. They don't bother searching her more thoroughly, but even if they had they would have found nothing. The girl's forte is taijutsu; the only dangerous thing in Kotone's clothes is Kotone.

Hatsuka, meanwhile, has been amassing a seemingly impossible pool of shuriken, senbon, smoke bombs, flash tags, and makibishi in the dirt around him. "Wait, wait!" he cries as the man collects the last of the sharp little instruments into the basket and starts away, "hold up, I found more!" He pulls another handful of shuriken from somewhere in his pants and the tanto his father had insisted he take from the family armory clatters to the ground from somewhere in his short blue robe. He calls the man back again when he remembers the makibishi he has stuffed into the rolled cuff on the robe's short sleeves.

Oshiro leads them through a small door off to one side, which opens into narrow passageways likely meant for the household staff. The hallways are dark, and dingey, but every so often, an open door or the fluttering of a curtain allows a glimpse into the grand, spacious, rooms beyond. Though he's seen just about everything in his years as a jonin, the children have clearly never seen anything like this before. Hatsuka, at least, lets out an appreciative whistle.

He eventually shows them to a huge dining hall, empty save for actual musicians rehearsing towards the back of the room, and servants rushing about arranging seating and decorations. Some kind of important gathering was scheduled for later that evening, and Oshiro plucks a menu from one of the tables. There would be more than enough for each dish the kitchen was stocked to prepare, so it would be safe to offer the ninja each one of the entrees. "Ladies first," he says, shoving the menu into Kotone's hands.

"Damn it," Zabuza mutters under his breath, ignoring the disapproving look Zakuro shoots down at him. There's a bewildered look on her face as she stares down at the paper, and he knows exactly what's about to happen.

She immediately tries to pass the menu off to Hatsuka, but he refuses it. "Come on," he encourages. "You can do it. Pick whichever one you want."

She blinks at him, shakes her head with tiny quick movements. "I can't," she says trying to get him to take it again. "It's all the same to me. You go ahead."

Zabuza remembers the first time they'd found that convenience store. How long she had stared at those packaged onigiri. It was only later, when he learned to read, that he realized what had happened. That she'd literally taken the package with her name on it. There's no ume fruit on the menu here, no instruction she can infer.

They're going to be there forever. Kotone's beginning to look distressed, and the servant has that dawning look of revulsion civilians get when she betrays their expectations and isn't the sweet little girl they're expecting. He's about to move to snatch the stupid menu from her hands himself when Hatsuka speaks again, a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

"Cats," he says firmly. She looks up, puzzled, and waits for an explanation. "You go and you find them without anyone telling you to. You would rather be around cats than not around cats," he explains carefully. "You **like** cats. So, this is the same. Which one would you rather have? Which one of **_these_** is cats?"

"Hopefully, none of them."

A beat, and Hatsuka bursts into uproarious laughter.

"My god," Says Zakuro in mock-horror, quiet enough that only Zabuza can hear. "Was that a joke? **_It's learning_**." Zabuza has to grit his teeth to stay quiet, but he sees the way Zakuro's watching him, expectantly, knows their Sensei's been needling him all day to elicit a reaction he can then correct. He suspects he knows why the swordsman keeps choosing her as a target (like she's ** _special_** to him somehow), and he's not going to give him the satisfaction. Besides, he's already well aware that she thinks she's funny (she isn't), if you know to listen for it. This, though, is unusual, and he's struggling to remember if he's ever seen her make a decision before.

Kotone's watching Hatsuka giggle, and though she doesn't partake herself, she looks rather pleased. The kunoichi resolutely sets to studying the list, face set in careful consideration. "I've never had beef before," she says quietly. There's little room to raise cattle in the rocky terrain of the land of water, and since the war began, trade with the mainland has been limited. "So… so this one. Is that okay?"

She looks uneasy even when Oshiro assures her it's alright, and she can hand the menu to Hatsuka, who claps her on the back, gushing encouragement. They sit together while they're eating as well, Hatsuka chattering away while Kotone fixates on the musicians rehearsing in the corner.

"What…" she begins quietly, head inclined as she contemplates them. "What's that big thing?"

Zakuro lets out an incredulous snort, has to pause between bites of his dinner. " ** _That_** ," he says jovially, "is the thing you were named for."

She blinks at him in surprise, returns her attention to the stringed instrument, and the gentle, almost rippling, music it sends in waves across the room. "It's beautiful," she murmurs, expression distant as she furrows her brow a little in confusion. "Why would anyone name **_me_** after something like ** _that_**?"

Hatsuka looks up at her, nudges her playfully to snap her back from wherever she'd drifted off to. "They're also huge."

She lets out an airy little hum in reply. He's drawn her attention back to the table though, and Zabuza finds himself caught watching her. Kotone stares at him for a long moment, expressionless, but she glances down quickly from her plate back to him and seems to reason that it's her meal he's coveting. Wordlessly, she flips her chopsticks around to move a strip of beef from her plate across to his, and resumes her conversation with Hatsuka as if nothing had happened. When they finish eating, Hatsuka grabs her by the hand and hurriedly drags her over towards the musicians.

A deliberate little cough alerts him to the fact that Zakuro is watching him watch them. "You can go over there, if you'd like to; I'm in no hurry. If Juzo wants to be a stick-in-the-mud, he can wait in the rain."

Zabuza grimaces, replies with a distasteful noise low in his throat, and goes back to picking at his meal more aggressively than would be considered polite. He pops the little strip of beef into his mouth and regrets it immediately. It's ** _amazing_** , and there's no way to get it back home. Now he knows what he's missing.

"Can I give you a little advice?" Zakuro starts in that tone Zabuza knows means he doesn't have a choice in the matter. "If you want to talk to her, just do it."

He chokes on the stupid beef, glaring at Zakuro as he clears his throat.

"What's the inevitable conclusion to all this?" He rolls his eyes. "Sure, you could ignore each other for the rest of your lives, but that isn't the outcome you want, is it? So alternately, one of you cracks and approaches the other, after the gods only know how long. But we've already established that you're both stubborn enough to hold out forever, so somebody's going to have to **_decide_** to make nice, and we've established that you **_want to_** , so you might as well cut out the bullshit in the middle, and fix it now."

His nose crinkles and eyes narrow up at the jonin's blunt assessment. He could tell him that he's only **_observing_** his teammates for lack of anything better to do, that he was the one who very deliberately caused the rift between himself and Kotone, and that was the way he liked it. He couldn't have her thinking that she was different from any of the other children in that arena, that she was **_important_** to him, the way he resents Misao suggesting.

He says nothing, trusts in his contemptuous expression to communicate his point.

/ / / /

Travelling back, without the nobles in tow, takes only a fraction of the time. Unhindered by civilian limitations they race back towards the coast in great leaps and bounds, through immense forests and craggy mountain passes, a circuitous route meant to avoid the last known areas of conflict while still making good time.

Zakuro follows behind them while Juzo has taken the lead, Kotone close beside him like a particularly acrobatic duckling. Every so often she'll ask him something, and while he doesn't really answer, he doesn't really reject her and so she's content where she is.

Hatsuka is more persistent in his attempts at bonding. Speaking to Zabuza at all is such a novelty that it hasn't quite sunk in yet that he despises small-talk altogether, and the short, dismissive answers just roll off the Nezumi boy without deterring him. They're just nearing the coast of the Land of Fire as he continues to chatter away, mid-air between massive branches.

"—so next thing I know, my uncle's knocked me flat on my butt— he hadn't even said go, yet. I mean, we're just training, I've literally never held a sword before, you think for the first session he'd just focus on the actual—"

Hatsuka cuts off with a strangled yelp as his foot catches on an unseen tripwire and he plummets to the forest floor, just barely throwing himself clear of the resulting barrage of shuriken.

Zabuza redirects the momentum of his jump, kicking off the next tree to turn and follow after him. Kotone and the two swordsmen drop as well, Zakuro crouching near his student to find him stunned but otherwise unharmed. He's activated a tag on the line, causing the wire to detach from its anchoring and coil itself, painfully tight, around his leg. The older swordsman's the most skilled with spellwork, and quickly sets to disentangling his student from the trap. Hatsuka groans as the possessed wire's death-grip on his calf finally loosens. "Why does this stuff always happen to **_me?_** "

There's a distant rustle through the leaves, against the direction of the wind. "Well, there'll be no talking our way out of this one," Zakuro notes dryly as he turns one of the shuriken over in his hand, holds it up so they can see it.

"Iwagakure," Kotone assesses at the sight of its craftsmanship.

"Very good," Biwa acknowledges, keeping his eyes on the direction of the first shadowy figures to become visible through the shadows. "Probably trying to snare messengers to, and from, Konoha."

"So they hate us on principle, and now they've seen Biwa," Zakuro sighs, helping Hatsuka to his feet. "Once they ID one of the Swordsmen, everyone's out to make a name for themselves."

"What a shame. Looks like we'll have to kill them all," says the younger swordsman, a ghost of a smile exposing his sharpened teeth in spite of the dreary tone as he readies the great blade. "Although, I think the head-cleaver's overdue for a good drink." He and Zakuro exchange a sly look, and all at once they dart forward as the Iwa-nin charge.

There are only three in total. Zakuro and Biwa handle one each as a third slips through their guard towards the genin. Hatsuka recoils, but before the hidden-rock ninja's fist can connect, Kotone's knocked his feet out from beneath him and Zabuza's pounced, driving a kunai into the boy's neck. He isn't much older than they are, now that Zabuza gets a good look at him, and might have been a genin himself.

It's over in an instant, and Zakuro's waving them over to the other two bodies, a growing pool of deep red sinking into the forest floor. "C'mere," he calls grinning. "I want to show you something neat." Curiously the three genin approach. Though they had known it had been his, they've never seen Zakuro handle Kubikirohocho. The much older ninja takes it from Biwa as though it weighed nothing, moves as though it's a part of him with an ease that surpasses Juzo's easily. "What do you think this is made of?"

"It's steel, right?" Hatsuka says brightly, absently reaching for the tanto still hidden in his clothes.

"Nope," he says proudly, with a razor-sharp grin. "That's pure Iron from the hilt down."

The Nezumi boy's brow furrows. "That's impossi— how much does that **_weigh?_** Nah, nah it's gotta be steel, right? Iron's too brittle, it would shatter."

Zakuro chuckles easily. "Ah, yes, you Nezumi and your tamahagane. But you're right, it does break. Frequently, in fact. But– hmm," his smile disappears as he examines the blade, still dripping blood from its latest victim. "Hmm, that won't do. Let me just—" And Zabuza watches in horror as he finds a stone embedded in the forest floor, hits the point of the blade against it until it chips off. He holds up a finger to silence them as Hatsuka also looks like he thinks their sensei's lost his mind, but he lays the broken tip into the pool of blood. When he raises the weapon, it's whole again. "Tadaa," he drawls as he returns the sword to Juzo. "See? Iron. Good as new."

"Woooah," Zabuza hears Hatsuka breath beside him, and though he's trying very hard to seem unimpressed, it's difficult in the face of what could easily be called magic. Kotone creeps closer, hesitating to a questioning pause before Juzo nods and allows her to draw nearer. She studies it closely, just barely resisting the urge to lay her fingers against the cool metal, her eyes shining with something like wonder.

And then he whirls around so quickly he nearly takes her head off.

Metal rings out against metal as the blade blocks the massive shuriken sent spinning towards them. There were more Iwagakure ninja, and these ones move into the clearing so quickly there's no mistaking them for anything but jonin, just five brown and red blurs rushing towards them.

Zakuro and Juzo manage to engage two of them, a hastily pulled together water clone by Biwa heading off a third. Zabuza darts back towards his earlier kill to retrieve the curved kirigakure kunai from its throat, seizes it just in time to stop a straight Hidden stone kunai thrust downwards by the taller ninja towards his face. He ducks out of the way, just barely managing to scramble from the elite ninja's grasp, failing to find any opening to attack. Suddenly there's a cry from the other end of the glade, and he looks over to see an identical ninja flung through the air by a water bullet jutsu and smash against a tree trunk. The stone ninja collapses in a limp heap, and his own opponent, nothing but a rock clone, disintegrates into pebbles.

So there were only four. Zabuza's eyes dart around the battlefield, heart still pounding, as he takes stock of the situation. One is dead, Zakuro and Biwa are both handling the second (a kunoichi, firing blisteringly fast, earth-style techniques one after the other), and the third—

Kotone is struggling with the third one. She's tiny in his grasp, strangled by one well-muscled forearm locked around her neck, both of her own hands shaking with the effort it takes to keep the knife in his free hand from plunging into her throat. She tries to shake him off, careful, tactical movements meant to exploit weaknesses in his stance, but he's so much bigger and experienced that she can't break free.

Zabuza takes off at a sprint towards them, as she sinks her teeth into the exposed flesh of the enemy's arm until she draws blood, and then bites down harder, tearing through muscle and tendons. She digs her nails into his wrist, but they're bitten short and blunted. He roars, curses her, but doesn't let go. Her lips are starting to look blue, her eyes unfocused.

He's hurtling towards them when something like huge, cold, fingers close around his ankle, and sink back into the ground, an abrupt stop to his frantic momentum. He hears the snap before he feels it.

But he does feel it, even through the haze of adrenalin, white hot pain, radiating from the ankle to race up his leg and through his body. He can feel it swelling already against the tight grip of the earth around the trapped limb, the grating slide of misplaces bones sliding against one another. Zabuza can't supress the agonized groan that builds in his chest, doubled over where he hit the ground, his broken leg still sunk into the soil. Slowly, the last rock nin approaches him, hands still held in the last seal of the jutsu. Zabuza grits his teeth against the pain, and hurriedly strains to reach the kunai that had fallen just out of his grasp.

The bastard's toying with him. The other jonin are occupied, and he doesn't see a genin as a anything more than entertainment. Zabuza can see it in the way he's waiting to strike, just watching the boy struggle like an animal caught in a trap. Zabuza can just barely reach the kunai, the very tips of his fingers brushing against the metal, but not enough to grasp. He's stretched as far as he'll go, the bones in his leg feeling as though they're coming apart, held together by nothing but his skin and screaming in protest.

The air is knocked from his lungs as the jonin's foot comes down on his back, the enemy ninja crouching on him. "Is this what you're after?" he asks, reaching forward to easily lift the kunai, laughing as Zabuza still tries to swipe at it as it's stolen from him. He feels the point of it pressed against his neck, just deep enough to let a drop of blood run down his skin.

" _Zabuza!_ "

He's only heard that frantic note in her voice once before, years ago. She's fighting to breathe, and it comes out as barely a gasp.

He can twist under the pressure just far enough to look up at the rock jonin, eyes narrowed and teeth bared in a snarl. The enemy grins at that, opens his mouth to speak.

Instead, his eyes go wide, trail down to the blade protruding from the front of his brown flak jacket, and roll back into his head. Hatsuka yanks the tanto free, eyes wide and hands shaking, but the dead ninja jerks in some final muscle spasm as he topples over, and Hatsuka panics visibly, striking again at the possible-threat. There's no reaction when the blade cuts into his skin, no spray of blood pushed by a beating heart.

There's a cry of frustration and effort as the stone kunoichi unleashes a final desperate attack, the ground trembling beneath them and a massive surge of spiked stone peaks erupt from the ground. Zakuro is able to evade the spikes to reach and finally kill the kunoichi, but the resulting shockwave wrenches at Zabuza's trapped leg and sends Hatsuka flying.

Biwa had already peeled away from the fight with the female ninja and Kotone collapses to the ground, clutching at her burning throat, chest heaving as she sucks in desperate lungfuls of air. Her captor's head hits the ground beside her. She thanks Juzo quietly, before setting to wiping the blood from her lips to get the taste of human flesh from her mouth.

"Not bad," Juzo says, kneeling by the dead ninja to examine the chunk of mangled tissue she had nearly completely detached from his arm. "Imagine what you could do with teeth like mine." She hums thoughtfully as she pulls herself to her feet.

Zabuza slowly pulls himself to a kneeling position, and starts to dig his ankle free with his hands. The earth's death-grip on him had stopped when the ninja had died, but it was still buried, and he looks up when another set of small hands sinks into the earth to help. Together, they eventually uncover the remains of his ruined ankle, blackened and swollen, and she eases it from the dirt carefully like some fragile artifact.

Zakuro wanders towards them to peer over her shoulder, lets out an astonished whistle at the sight of it. "It's okay," he says in a tone that isn't particularly reassuring. "There's a mist outpost on the nearest island from here. There's a medic there; it's only about an hour away if we hurry. How's Hatsuka?"

"Unconscious, but I think he's okay," Kotone says in stereo as two water clones walk by carrying the other genin, one cradling him with its arms hooked beneath his shoulders, the other walking backwards with his legs.

Zakuro waves her away, taking the boy from her clones' arms. "Save your chakra, I'll carry him. You take Zabuza."

" ** _What?_** " he blurts, shaking his head. "I'm fine. I don't need anyone to carry me, I—" but when he moves to stand his head spins and he comes crashing back down. He lands against something warm instead of the cold, dewy, grass, and the next thing he knows Kotone's scooped him up with an arm around his back and one beneath his knees.

"Put me down," he insists, sighing when she inclines her head at him, brows furrowed. He knows she can't, and there's no plausible way for him to get anywhere fast on one leg, but he's compelled to at least comply under protest and a certain token resistance feels necessary.

"I could carry you on my back," she offers, "but I'm afraid it would jostle your ankle more than this." Her voice is still hoarse from the choking, a bruise beginning to spread across the pale skin of her throat. Reluctantly, he wraps his arms around her shoulders to hold on, careful of the injuries.

"This is humiliating," he fumes.

"It's efficient," she assures him.

Zakuro tasks Biwa with disposing of the bodies. If it became known that Kirigakure ninja killed a group of Iwagakure ninja spying on Konohagakure, Konoha's enemies would accuse the Hidden Mist of backing them and they'd be dragged into the conflict regardless of the actual circumstances. Biwa agrees to meet them at the outpost, and they set off for the coast. It's going to hurt no matter what she does, so they opt for the quickest route, back up in the treetops. Sailing between branches is fine, but every time she lands, gentle as she's trying to be, he winces involuntarily.

"Are you okay?" she says eventually. "I was very…" she pauses, biting at her lip. There's still blood smeared across her face. "…preoccupied. With if you were going to be all right or not."

"The word you're looking for is 'worried,'" Zakuro calls from up ahead.

"Worried," she repeats quietly. "Yes."

"I'm fine," Zabuza snaps. Hearing it out loud, he sounds like a sulking child, so he holds his jaw shut tight and stays quiet. She doesn't look convinced, especially given how he can feel his sweat-drenched hair stuck to his face, and can't help the way his breath catches with each impact. She looks down at him, the tiniest dip in her eyebrows. **_Concern._**

"You know, if it hurts too badly, I could always—"

"Kotone, stop offering to **_concuss your teammates_**."

"Sorry, Zakuro-sensei."

She really is worried over him. He tries not to think of her struggling to breathe in that Iwa-nin's grasp, but the bruising around her throat is darker every time he looks over. "I was…" He stops himself, clenches his teeth again to keep anything stupid from coming out, tries to will the image from his head. "I was under the impression you didn't want anything to do with me, anymore," he finishes, indifferently.

"You wanted me to leave you alone, so I was," she replies quietly. "I could… I could go back to that, if you'd rather."

He shrugs as much as he can manage without dislodging himself from her grasp. "This is fine," he says, deliberately nonchalant. It's difficult to keep from looking at her being held this way. "I don't care one way or the other."

"Yeah?" she blinks down at him, that thing that's almost a smile across her face. "I think… I think I would **_like_** that," she says experimentally, like she's testing the sound of it, the way it feels on her tongue. "I would rather we be talking than not talking," she concludes, and he's pretty sure she's mentally weighing him against kittens right now. "The… the other day, you didn't have to— I mean, Zakuro-sensei is right about me, so. I don't have feelings to hurt—"

"That… that just slipped out. Don't think anything of it."

"Oh. Oh, okay," She nods, but the little smile is gone.

The trees have thinned to the point where each jump is taking more and more effort, and the branches are growing spindly and weak. Zakuro drops to the ground, a much shorter fall than it was in the heart of the forest, and Kotone follows suit. The air's taken on a familiar quality, sea birds turning overhead as they near the shore. The closest island belonging to the Land of Water is visible from the beach, so they opt to walk instead of waiting for the ferry. Zabuza knows what her chakra control is like and half expects to plunge into the seawater with every step, but she holds him tighter and her face is set in intense concentration. He isn't a sensor-type, but this close he thinks he can almost feel the chakra humming beneath her skin.

"So, since we're talking," he says, impishly, "sounds like you want to file all your teeth and join the shichinin, huh?"

"Someday," she says, more certain than he's ever heard her. "I think I would like that, too."

When the reach the outpost, a tower hidden among pine trees overlooking the seaside, the chunin stationed there fetch the medic. He gives Hatsuka a quick once-over, checking his pupils' response to light, taking his pulse and feeling through his soft brown hair for any injuries to his skull, before concluding that he's more asleep than unconscious and just needs some rest.

Zakuro takes Hatsuka to a cot upstairs, and Kotone sits with Zabuza while the medic turns his attention to his ankle. It's a misshapen lump of bruised skin, burning hot and swollen beyond recognition when the medic-nin peels his sandal away, clucking at it disapprovingly. The force had broken it, but the repeated strain one way and another as he's struggled, and the force of that doton jutsu had shattered it. The medic assures him, sternly, that this is going to take a while, warns him that he's going to have to shift everything back into place before he heals the bones. If they heal the way they are now, the joint will be nothing but a useless ball of bone.

Zabuza's knuckles go white as he clenches his first with the effort it takes not to cry out, breath coming in shaking rattles as the medic feels around to jerk the bone fragments back into their proper places. There's pain, and heat, and the unnatural shifting of bones together as the green light spilling from between the medic's fingers starts to knit the fragments together. Kotone's shifted closer to him, and he completely forgets about the medic and his ankle in his confusion when he feels her fingers start to rake through his unkempt hair.

"W… what are you doing," he stammers as she shushes him quietly, keeps petting him like one of her stray cats.

"I'm trying to make you feel better," she says, and he realizes it's probably something she's seen Hatsuka's mother do. Her voice is too cold to be comforting, as she probably means to be, but he understands the intention. It's not something he need from her, though, and he recoils.

"Kotone," he says flatly, "stop that."

Kotone quietly excuses herself to go check on Hatsuka.

Finally the medic is finished, lets him test his weight on the newly healed limb. It aches, but it fits back into his sandal without straining the fasteners, and it actually looks like an ankle again. The chunin wanders off to report to their sensei on his condition, and Zabuza's left alone in the little treatment room.

His jaw is aching from how hard he's been clenching his teeth, little crescents dug into his palm where his nails have bitten into his skin. His altercation with Zakuro from days earlier is still ringing in his ears. _Keep it in._

Rage, pain, and yes, for a moment, he's ashamed to admit, **_fear_**. They spin inside him like a storm and he's struggling to keep it from showing on his face, spilling from his lips.

He thinks of the markings over Juzo's mouth, like bars, like a cage, thinks of the masks that black ops shinobi wear. Something between him and the rest of the world. Something to make him a little less readable, a little less **_human_**. Something to keep it all **_in_**.

There's a roll of linen bandages abandoned on the counter.

/ / / /

Hatsuka wanders back down, looking groggy and shaken a short while later, Kotone helping him down the stairs, Zakuro watching over them both. They all pause when the catch sight of Zabuza, Hatuka blinks in confusion and Kotone is quietly puzzled, but neither say anything. Zakuro keeps quiet as well, but the look in his eyes is knowing.

Knowing better to remark on the other boy's appearance, Hatsuka plunks down on a bench set up in the hallway and he pulls the tanto from its sheath, flinching at the sight of the blood dried along the blade, but he sets to cleaning it anyway with a cloth Zakuro offers him from his sleeve. It's not his, he reminds his teammates, so he'd better return it the way he borrowed it.

"You did really well, today," Kotone offers, and the smile he gives her in return is weary.

"Yeah," Zabuza agrees, reluctantly, slowly growing used to the feeling of the cloth against his mouth, the sound of his voice muffled through it, the warmth of his breath bounced back to him, "good job." It isn't what he should be saying, but the proper words stick in his throat and the other genin seems to understand anyway.

"Ehhh, you know," he says shrugging as he examines the freshly cleaned, razor sharp, edge. "Just returning the favour."

/ / / /

It feels like forever since she's seen the village when they finally return home.

She and Hatsuka go one way, Zakuro and Zabuza the other, but this time she's free to wave goodbye, to look forward to seeing him in training tomorrow.

Hatsuka shares the details of the mission around the dinner table, pausing occasionally to mediate as his little cousins fight for extra portions. Asuka-san makes up a plate for their guest, perhaps knowing that Kotone would be more likely to sit and starve than snap up food she doesn't feel belongs to her. She notices there's even more made than usual, Asuka's own plate unusually full. Her pregnant belly's beginning to show beneath her clothes.

He falters though, when he gets to that morning, and Kotone has to step in, let them know how he came through for them. Hatsuka ducks his head, ashamed, but his parents assure him he did well, that he did the right thing, and he perks up a little.

Asuka and Kimaru both notice the marks around her neck, watch her carefully, and she tries not to react when it hurts to breathe, to swallow. Hatsuka`s little cousins don`t understand what they`re looking at, but they find it interesting, crawling on top of her when she sits in the living room to prod at the burst blood vessels under her skin.

She lays awake that night, replaying the fight over, and over in her head, how fast it had happened. She's never faced a jonin before, been so completely outclassed. Kotone has never been pinned so helplessly, never faced anyone strong enough to be so completely unhindered by her tricks. She'd been forced to tread water, accomplishing nothing but staying alive until a ninja of his own caliber had come to save her, unable to help Zabuza trapped mere feet away.

No. No, she realizes. There **_was_** something she could have done.

She's learned now. She can find her chakra, harness it, focus it to the soles of her feet or hands or wherever else she needs it. Kotone closes her eyes, breathes deeply, and feels along her chakra pathway towards that place in her brain where the flow is obstructed, tries to find it, isolate it, and force it open.

She doesn't manage to, but by the time she falls asleep she thinks she has a better grasp on it than she had before. She'll keep trying.

/ / / /

They fall into a routine, taking more normal genin ranked missions, and though problems do arise, it's either not as drastic as their first real fight, or perhaps they've simply become accustomed to brushes with death.

Sometimes it's Kotone who pulls him out of the way, sometimes Zabuza redirects a jutsu meant for her. Once they both come-to in an unfamiliar sheltered place to find Hatsuka standing over them, beaming.

The graduation exam was always the village's major winnowing process, with chunin and jonin being simple promotions based on endorsements by superiors and their performance records. Zakuro's team is promoted a few months later, perhaps a bit quickly because of the war and increased need for ninja stations along their borders, but Misao doesn't doubt that they're ready. They spend three weeks of each month (when not given a more important assignment) guarding one of the lookout stations, the last week back in the village for training or new missions. It's largely uneventful.

Kotone continues to live with Hatsuka, and they return to the village one day to find his mother had given birth just after he'd left. The little newborn is round, and pink, and happy and Hatuka wipes his eyes on his sleeves as his parents joyfully introduce him to his new little brother, Hari.

"You can hold him, if you'd like," Asuka offers Kotone after several days of carefully watching the tiny creature, not daring to come any closer. "Just," she says as Kotone takes a seat on the couch beside her and ever so gently takes the baby into her arms. "You have to be really happy, and friendly with babies. Smile, talk to him like you're excited."

Kotone does as she asks, faking the kind of smile she's learned to imitate, warming her normally cold voice to a more pleasant, borrowed tone, not unlike Asuka's own. "Why?"

"Babies are just learning how to be people. You have to encourage them to smile, and… and…." She trails off, throat going dry as the little kunoichi looks up at her. She can fake a smile, and a caring voice, but her eyes are still dead and empty when she blinks at the older kunoichi.

"What…" she begins. "What happens if you don't?"

Asuka can't answer her.

Kotone hands the baby back to his mother, murmuring a polite thank you and then disappears out the door without another word.

/ / / /

It's a silly little luxury, but Zakuro gets himself a little television set. He can pick up a few channels from the lands of Fire, Lightning, and Steam. There's a single channel broadcast out of the Land of water, but it's nothing but weather reports and highly controlled newscasts.

He invites his students over every chance he gets when a movie is playing. After all, he has two feral children to civilize.

Supervising them as chunin is much the same as genin. He's contemplated replacing his kunoichi, now that she's theoretically trained enough to be handled by anyone. He does have a replacement in mind, but it would be dangerous to draw that kind of attention to the other girl. He'll simply keep mentoring her from the shadows as he's been doing all along.

Today, Kotone pays little attention to the film, even though it's the kind of mystery drama that usually piques her interest. Instead, she pours over the classified section of a local newspaper, circling things and frowning. Hatsuka has elected to spend his last night before a new posting with his baby brother and family, so it's just Zakuro, her, and Zabuza in front of the tv tonight. Zabuza, of course, loudly insists that it's stupid but he's already formed an idea about the identity of the culprit and he's as caught up as the rest of them in either being proven right, or calling bullshit when a surprise twist is pulled from nowhere.

He waits until the swordsman moves to the kitchen to make a pot of tea, unaware that he can easily hear everything that's going on, and can still watch them out of the corner of his eye. Zabuza climbs down off the couch to peer over her shoulder. "What are you doing, anyway?"

"Looking for an apartment," she says without looking up. "I have some money saved up, but…." she signs. "See, I have almost enough for the deposit on this one, and I think I make enough for the rent."

He quirks a thin eyebrow, plunks down to the tatami floor beside her. "You don't like living with Hatsuka's family?"

She shakes her head, scribbles out another entry she can't afford. "I do. But it's awfully crowded there and they've been so generous to me for such a long time…" she looks up at him, eyes wide. "Zabuza-kun, I'm afraid I might break their new baby," she says, as though it were self-explanatory.

He seems confused, but accepts that it makes sense to her. The boy slides the paper away from her, studying it with a frown. "Here," he says, indicating the entry below the one she'd mentioned. "You don't have enough for this, but you have enough for half of a two bedroom."

"I don't know anyone who's looking for a roommate."

He snickers. "You think I want to live with Zakuro forever?"

She sits up a little straighter. "Really?"

"Well yeah. It would just be temporary until we can afford places of our own, but—"

Kotone springs to her feet still clutching the paper. "We should go see the place, when we get back. There seem to be lots of apartments in that building, I bet there'll still be a vacancy."

Kotone spends the entire trek to the coast trying to convince Hatsuka that it's nothing he or his family did that's made her want to leave.

"I guess it is a little crowded," he concedes finally, lounging over the lookout's railing. "Hell, I wouldn't live with Risu if I didn't have to." As a reward for his promotion to chunin, Hatsuka's father had finally let him mark his family's summoning contract, and he'd taken to the summoning jutsu immediately. There's almost always a great brown rat perched on his shoulder, or settled in his haori. It seems that since the moment his blood hit the paper, they've been able to communicate somehow, and it chatters something into his ear that makes him giggle.

"For the record," Zakuro tells Zabuza as they look out over the other side, "I don't think this is a good idea. Do you remember what I said about inevitable conclusions?"

Zabua says nothing, just tightens the bandages around his face and looks out over the ocean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so at this point I'm officially all caught up with ff.net. Gonna start working on a new chapter, and I'll post it here (and there) when it's done, which may take a while. I seem to be averaging one chapter per month, but I'm going to do my best to stick with the momentum I've got going. :D Thank you for reading, and I'll see you all then <3


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 10**

Zabuza lets her do the talking when it comes time to meet the landlord. The bandages covering his face seem only to highlight the intensity of his gaze, and it's immediately clear that the man they approach in the grimy lobby is unnerved.

He's reluctant to rent to a pair of ten-year-olds, but Kotone is doing her best personable-yet-respectful act that Zabuza can pick apart into traits she's picked from Hatsuka, Zakuro in a good mood, and Mei from the assignments office. It's all careful smiles and just the right balance of confidence and deference to assure him of their maturity. After all, they are chunin, and it isn't without precedent. The shinobi who live here, he admits, keep largely to themselves, and have one of the village's only steady incomes year-round.

With a deliberate reluctance, he hands over a set of keys— apartment five, on the eigth floor (he watches Kotone relax, slightly, at the favourable numbers) and hurries away with their deposit.

It's one of the larger cylindrical buildings that dominate the village's modest skyline. The lobby is primarily a hallway to the stairwell, one side taken up largely by the landlord's sizeable apartment, the rest a smaller dwelling. From the damp smell masked by flowery soaps and the low rumble punctuated by clanking, the other side seems to be another small apartment and the rest, the laundry room. He leans into the room, and though it's cramped and slightly flooded, at least one coin-operated machine of each type seem to be in working order. He investigates the musty couch against one wall, and decides against touching it, let alone sitting.

He emerges from the laundry room to find that Kotone hasn't moved. She's staring at the key as she turns it over in her hands, like she's afraid it will disappear if she looks away. She barely notices when he speaks to her, only looking up after he's finished. "Wha?"

"I said," he repeats more clearly, "pretty sure he thinks you're a boy."

"Oh," she shrugs, finally pocketing the key, though still clutched securely in her hand, and follows him as he starts towards the stairs. "He assumed so, yes. I thought it might help our chances, so I didn't correct him." If anything, he's fairly certain she'd adjusted her body language and speech patterns. Even without her help, it's not a difficult mistake to make. Her voice is low for a girl, and it's not uncommon for boys to wear their hair long like she does. Strong as Zabuza's become, he's still bony and scrawny compared to her solid build. She's tall for her age, but between Fugiki and a different young man Zabuza's seen skulking around the compound like a shadow stretched long at sundown, she doesn't seem that unusual by comparison. "It doesn't bother me, and by the time he figures it out, it will likely be too late for him to change his mi—"

She stops as the creaking metal door swings open into the stairwell.

It isn't the building they hid in as children, but it's similar enough that they're both frozen by the sudden surge of déjà vu. Same blotchy grey floors, same peeling white paint, the same little alcove beneath the metal staircase, though its smaller than he remembers. This one is unoccupied, the side door sealed up tight and inaccessible to street urchins.

"I… I'm going to go on up ahead," she says finally as she begins up the first few stairs.

"Yeah," he says without taking his eyes off the door. "Yeah, I'll be right there."

He catches up to her a moment later, stepping out into the eighth floor hallway to find a door at the far end left open. Apartment five is tiny, the last in the row and so the curve of the building cuts through the open, empty space that would act as a living room, and what looks like a small bedroom. A corner is set aside as a kitchen, with a little table but no chairs, some cupboards and a stove and fridge. There's another bedroom, a bathroom, and what looks like a small closet. He finds Kotone in the smaller bedroom, staring, enthralled, out the curving window. The view is largely of the nearest apartment building, but around that he can see misty sky, trees, and a few smaller buildings below.

The bag she brought with her few belongings is already laid out on the unmade bed.

"I think… I would prefer this room. If it's okay with you," she says without looking away, in that halting, guilty way she has when she's asking for something.

"Fine by me," he says shrugging. The other bedroom— ** _his_** bedroom, is larger, with a larger bed, and the same empty dresser and closet. Oh, yes, that's a good feeling. **_His_**. Not hiding somewhere, not someplace lent to him out of charity or duty, but really **_his_** , paid for with his own earnings.

"Hey, Zabuza?" she says as he turns to leave, and he pauses with a tiny sound to indicate he's listening.

"We live here," she says dreamily, leaning against the windowsill. "This place is ours."

"Ours," he agrees.

They spend the afternoon sprawled on the living room floor with takeout and a notepad, carefully itemizing everything the apartment is missing, and what, from that list, they can live without. Of course, they're former-street-children-turned-hardened-ninja so having four walls at all is a luxury, and it becomes a simple matter of weighing the minor funds they have at their disposal against the usefulness of each entry.

"Plates," Zabuza adds before popping another dumpling into his mouth. He's mastered the art of eating without taking the bandages off, just nudging the appropriate strip of cloth out of the way.

"We could use paper ones for a while," Kotone suggests, adding it to the list. She takes another mouthful of soba noodles from her carton, and notes her chopsticks, "and some plastic utensils."

Kotone looks up at the rest of the apartment from her vantage point on the floor. "We should probably get some furniture, uhh…" she glances down at the list and the estimated cost of each item as well as their combined funds. "Eventually."

They set out in search of towels, bedsheets, soap, food and assorted small items they're missing.

He feels conspicuous out like this, civilians giving him wary looks and hurrying away, the way they always did when Zakuro dragged him into town. They shy away from Kotone, but only after catching a glimpse of the metal plate tacked to her sleeve— otherwise, she seems harmless. Hatsuka would say— has said, that it's the intimidating energy he gives off. Kotone stalls in one aisle contemplating some cat food, but moves on without prompting soon enough.

A bag of cheap canned, frozen and dehydrated groceries later, the two chunin wander the village in search of a consignment shop Hatsuka had suggested.

They find it, tucked between a bar and an extension of the Mizukage's complex, in a familiar, less-reputable part of the village. Zabuza pushes the door open, the little bell attached ringing to alert the elderly shopkeeper of their presences. Kotone flinches reflexively at the sound; Zabuza pretends not to notice.

The shopkeeper rasps an unfriendly greeting and sharp warning not to break anything. Half of the wares on the shelves look to have been broken and shoddily repaired already.

Though the shop is small, the shelves are overflowing with knickknacks, ragged stuffed animals, cracked dinnerware. He finds a stack of towels, grabs the least disgusting few he can. They'll need a few (dozen) trips through the washing machine, he assesses, crinkling his nose in distaste, but afterwards they'll do. He imagines the sheets will need similar treatment. Kotone seems to have found the bin they're heaped in, bundled together in sets with loose blankets jumbled in. She's paused over it, completely still, something clutched in her hands.

It's a worn square of fabric, soft and swirled with soft colours, too tiny to be for anyone but a small child. She blows at it gently to dislodge the thick layer of dust, slowly turns to him, eyes wide and voice uncertain. "I found some girls' shirts over there. I couldn't be sure, but this… this was mine," she says softly, more to herself than him. "After my father died, they took our house… they must have emptied it, sold his things here… And if this is here, then…" She drops it suddenly, long, purposeful strides carrying her to a glass case by the register. She wipes the grime away with her sleeve to peer inside, shifting as he as he peeks over her shoulder to give him a better look.

"There," she says, the point of a pale finger tracing the rows of repossessed jewellery to land on a dusty pair of pink pearl studs. Her other hand trails, absently, to her ear to play with one of her own once-similar earrings, now plain white plastic where the paint has completely flaked away. "I think, maybe…" She studies them intently, eyes distant, but makes no move to remove them from the case. Without saying a word she drifts back to root through the bedding as though nothing had happened.

Silence settles between them, just the rustling of fabric as she digs, and as he shifts the towels under one arm to grab two pillows on a shelf against the wall. "Never took you for the sentimental type," Zabuza says finally as he reaches over her.

"I'm not," she insists quickly, tossing her baby blanket out of the way when it falls back into the bin. "I just…" She sets aside each bundle marked 'double' as she comes across them in a little pile between them, "I don't know."

He's scowling beneath the bandages as he kneels beside her. His hands are full, and so carefully the boy sets his finds down on the floor so they can divvy them up to pay. He takes a dark blue sheet set and tosses the rest back. She's already set aside a set patterned with dumb little pink flowers. (He might have found it cute if the thought wasn't revolting.)

He frowns, studying her as she gathers up her half of their things. There's nothing in particular he can point to, just a vague impression, but if she was anyone else, he might think she looked sad. It's probably just a trick of the dim light. Zabuza is also acutely aware of a kind of restlessness growing as the silence continues, this unfamiliar impulse insisting that he say something.

He'd seen the price tag, and they were relatively worthless. The stones were tiny, the metal plain, and second-hand besides. "You've already paid your half of the rent and the food for now," he says brusquely, "so it makes no difference to me what you do with the rest of your money." Her expression doesn't change as she considers this, but her eyes flicker back towards the case for a moment.

She doesn't say anything more about it, but he never sees her without them again.

/ / / /

A mission overseas becomes available, to investigate a potential enemy stronghold. While nothing has come of it yet, Kirigakure's intelligence division has noted potentially threatening activity, in a prime location to cut of Kirigakure's supply lines if they so chose; however, it was considered unlikely that this was actually the case, and marked as a low-risk C mission.

"Probably a waste of time," Zakuro agrees, explaining the mission to his team, sans-Biwa, who is away on a mission of his own. "But it couldn't be worse than watch duty."

As it happened, the suspicious, supposedly abandoned factory building along the eastern coast of Yu no Kuni is not only occupied, but heavily guarded, and the bad intel leaves them pinned down by no less than a dozen Kumo-ninja.

The best course of action is to use the Hidden mist technique, and pick off the enemies one by one, but the jutsu takes a moment to conjure and both Zabuza and Zakuro have been unable to complete it uninterrupted.

" ** _Shit_** ," Hatsuka hisses, following Zabuza and diving behind an overturned piece of machinery for cover, as a raiton technique crackles by so narrowly that the hair on the nape of his neck prickles. "Of all the missions not to have the sword," he says weakly to Zakuro, crouching behind the same cover attempting to call up the mist again, and glances over wryly.

"The shinobigatana aren't feared for their weapons. You get recruited to the Shinobigatana for being a goddamn force of nature," the room finally grows visibly unclear as the mist thickens closest to them and creeps outwards. There's a walkway at the far side of the room, and their primary threat is the barrage of ninjutsu techniques the ninja stationed there rain down.

The jonin gestures for Zabuza to get started in the sufficiently obscure corner of the building, but he hesitates before darting out and it suddenly occurs to Hatsuka why.

"Wait, shit, where's Kotone?"

"I'm here," comes a strained reply from nearby, and a quick peek around their cover finds her struggling with a much larger Kumogakure ninja. Her proximity to their teammate is protecting her from the lightning-style techniques, but more are closing in to deal with her at close range. " ** _No_** ," She insists when Zabuza starts towards her, voice trembling with the effort it's taking to keep the enemy at bay, but her eyes are steely and resolute. "I've got this," she asserts.

"Your call," Zakuro drawls from beside him, still holding the handseals and thickening the mist. The factory's far enough inland that drawing the necessary water into the air would take anyone but a ninja of Zakuro's experience a prohibitively long time.

He can see the other boy's jaw clench beneath the bandages. "Kotone can handle herself," he says curtly, then motions for Hatsuka to follow him into the mist.

Zabuza's easy to pinpoint. If it were his chakra mingled with the water suspended in the air, it would be impossible, but Hatsuka can easily sense his presence within Zakuro's fog, and relative to the position of the enemy ninja, it's easy to predict which he'll target, and so focus on the others. If Zabuza's chakra signature was any stronger, he's fairly certain it would be visible, ominous and tumultuous, like a shadow radiating from him. Kotone's chakra is nothing like that, and it's hard to know she's there if you don't know what to look for, more like a glowing coal than a flame. Only slightly less abundant chakra reserves, but kept far tighter to her body. Nothing leaves her.

Which is why he's so surprised by the sudden jolt that he recognizes as her energy. It's only for an instant, but it's a burst of chakra far greater than anything he's ever felt from her, or anyone less than Zakuro himself. He recognizes the enemy ninja that comes sailing through the mist and crashes into the wall beside him. The concrete's cracked at the point of impact, the ninja himself a broken heap on the ground.

He has no time to think on it, because the sound has drawn the attention of his target. Hatsuka plunges his tanto through the man's lungs and moves on to the next. Zakuro must have entered the fray himself, because the enemy's chakra signatures are flickering out so rapidly, one after the other, and soon the mist thins.

Zakuro's bent over a corpse when Hatsuka can see him again, yanking a kunai free. Zabuza drops down from the upper level, blood-spattered and scowling. "Not bad," their teacher tells him, grinning, and setting to work stripping off the dead ninja's flak jacket and weaponry, anything that wouldn't burn easily. "Not bad at all— I have some pointers. We'll work on it. Hatsuka," he begins, though not unkindly, "it needs some work. You've got to dispatch them and move on, you're hesitating too long between kills. You're keeping quiet better, but the other half of stealth work is speed. Hit them before they know what's coming. Again," he shrugs, "we'll work on it."

Zabuza's only half-listening, brow furrowed in confusion as his gaze slips from Kotone, breathing hard but unharmed, and the mangled bodies strewn around her to the dent she'd left in the concrete and back. Zakuro turns to her as well, mouth drawn into a thin line. She perks up at the attention, anxious for his advice.

"How many is that?" Is all he says.

"One," she answers, "but I can feel the second one."

"Hm," is all he says, a little impartial humming sound before he turns away from her again. Her crestfallen gaze drops to the floor, though ever the dutiful student, she still watches him with downcast eyes. "Alright, we've got to level this place and obliterate the bodies. Nobody can ever trace this back to Kirigakure. Kotone, I want you to gather up the flak jackets and hitai-ate, sink them in the bay. Boys, you're helping me with the bodies."

Hatsuka waits until she's out of the room, her grasp overflowing with Kumogakure equipment. "Okay, what the hell ** _was_** that?" He blurts the second he hears the factory door thud shut behind her.

"That," Zakuro begins impatiently, drawing a tiny scroll from his sleeve, "was a chakra gate. Now, completely destroying a body, properly, is a very involved process," he releases the seal on the scroll, and unrolls it to reveal an array of razor sharp tools. "Takes tons of extra classes and study, and we don't have a whole lot of time, so mostly you're just going to be observing, today."

"Yeah," Hatsuka starts, not only because of the cold, sick feeling creeping into his gut at the sight of those tools and memory of the night before his graduation (but if it stalls that a little, it's a bonus). "But what **_was_** it? How do you **_do_** that?"

Zabuza says nothing, but he's watching the jonin so intently that it's almost as good as chiming in.

Zakuro sighs, and to the dismay of Hatsuka's churning stomach, gets right to work taking the body apart while he talks. "It's a little like rolling your tongue, really. Some people can't do it, some people can, and of those people some can do it more than others. Two is… not bad," he admits. "It allows more chakra to pass through the system at once, makes the user stronger, and faster than they would be normally. It's fine, for someone like her, but if I was either of you, I wouldn't go looking for them," and he levels the boys with a sharp look.

"She's been sneaking off to train by herself…" Zabuza says under his breath, but Zakuro ignores him and goes back to working on the body, explaining each step as he does, but he's working so quickly it's impossible to really follow.

Still, despite the twisting in his gut, Hatsuka forces himself to watch every motion. This is his future, after all. He'd always sort of wanted to join the sensor-corps, but Risu had told him in no uncertain terms that for the good of the family he was to take a more respectable position with ANBU or die trying. Beside him, Zabuza is anything but squeamish, barely blinking as he takes everything in, and when Kotone returns she's fascinated. They've both expressed interest in the extra training as well, Kotone for the increased responsibility, and Zabuza because Black Ops. missions are exactly his kind of work.

Once they're properly disassembled and laid out, a quick Katon technique reduces them to ash in moments, and a few well-placed tags reduce the building to rubble.

They catch one of the threatened cargo ships back to the Land of Water. It's unusual for her, but Kotone finds a corner to curl up in the moment they're below deck, and sleeps the entire voyage. It's difficult to wake her when they arrive.

/ / / /

The training grounds in the village feel too exposed for this type of training, but there are secluded spaces in the surrounding forest that are perfect in a familiar kind of way. She's sure Zabuza's worked out what she'd been sneaking out for, but he doesn't say anything, or try to stop her, or ask to join, so there's no need to sneak anymore. There probably never had been, because as she should have predicted, he couldn't care less that she's training alone, or what she gets up to when she does.

Kotone takes a deep breath, focuses all her attention on the flow of chakra through her system. Opening a gate feels like trying to dislocate a joint with her mind— her body pushes back, tries to keep it closed, keep everything as it should be, a surge of pain to let her know she's damaging herself and she should stop, but she has can wrench it open anyway. She had never actually succeeded in opening a gate before that mission, but in that moment, perhaps because of the adrenalin coursing through her veins, she had been sure she could do it. She had asked her body for more strength than she had, and she had found it if only for an instant. The gate had snapped closed immediately, but she'd felt the sudden surge of chakra slam against the next barrier and now it's simply a matter of holding it open long enough to do it again.

It takes months before she manages to open the second, but the results are incredible. Rather like a dislocated limb, the more she does it the more willingly it slides out of place, until it's as natural as taking a breath. It leaves her feeling even more exhausted than before— gutted, drained, but it's worthwhile. Her only purpose is to serve the village, and it's her duty to develop anything that could make her a more effective ninja.

The first snowfall of the year had been at the beginning of that November, and by now it's reached ankle-depth, wet and sticky. Somewhere, not too far away, Hatsuka has probably already reached the academy, is probably already on his way home with his sister. She's never seen him as happy as he was when he left that morning.

It's grown colder, the air clearer than it had been through the summer and fall. She's still warm and panting for breath after that morning's training, but the cold air soon chills her perspiration, clumps of ice forming in her drenched hair as Kotone makes her way down the ravine and back to the village.

She's surprised to find Zabuza waiting in the lobby when she returns to the apartment building, but before she do anything more than look at him quizzically, he gestures to the cork-board by the laundry room door, covered in notices to and from the residents, before tearing one of the sheets down and handing it to her wordlessly. One of the tenants from the first floor is moving to back a smaller village high in the mountains to care for his aging parents. Since he won't be needing many of his things and has to leave urgently, he's desperate to get rid them as quick and is willing to sell his furniture for a very modest price. "And you were waiting for me to get back, so I could talk to him for you?" He makes a funny little scowl in reply that she knows to be a begrudging yes.

They'd been saving up for real furniture anyway, and their combined couch-fund actually buys them the man's sofa and two small chairs, as well as four small chairs for the kitchen table. A couple of water clones (to the civilian man's astonishment) make the chairs only one trip, and they return for the couch. It's light enough that either of them could carry it alone, but more for the sake of the couch they take an end each, and make it only as far as the door to the stairwell before a problem arises.

It gets stuck in the doorway so badly that there's no budging it, Zabuza on the lobby side, Kotone with the draft from the side door at her back.

In the end, Kotone has to go fetch Zakuro to seal it into a scroll for them. "There," he grins, making himself at home after releasing the jutsu in their living room. "There goes your excuse for never having us over." Zabuza glares at him in voiceless horror as he goes ahead and invites himself and Hatsuka over for dinner the next night.

Kotone spends the afternoon attempting clumsy tuna rolls and kappa maki. Thankfully Hatsuka arrives early with a pot of chirinabe his mother had helped him prepare, which she graciously takes and immediately sets it to warms on the stove. He's also brought his sister.

Grinning from ear to ear, Hatsuka gestures to the younger girl at his side, a protective arm thrown around her shoulder. She's got the same gentle features as her brother, but her eyes are determined. The girl's hair is longer, and so better able to curl, a kirigakure headband sits loosely around her neck between the twisting locks. "Kotone-chan," he begins, eyes shining "this is my sister, Momonga. Momo-chan, this is my teammate, Kotone. The guy ignoring you because he's made himself too busy sharpening kunai is Zabuza. Don't be offended, he's like that with everybody."

Momo smiles at her warmly, thanks them both for their hospitality, unimpressive as it is, and Kotone can't help but be struck by how different she looks, bright-eyed and beaming, from her brother when he had returned.

Zakuro arrives a moment later and Kotone quickly shows them around the apartment, really only as long as it takes to indicate each room, but she's eager to do so. "Here," he says, handing her a spiral bound book, _101_ _Inexpensive idiot-proof recipes_ , "almost a year late, but consider it a housewarming gift." His eyes flicker to the misshapen sushi set out on the table, arranged on a paper plate. "Not a moment too soon, it seems. And I doubt you're much better." Zabuza looks up to glare at him before going back to his work.

They sit on the new furniture, Momonga placing herself dangerously close to Zabuza and pestering him with questions about the weapons piled on the floor beside him, the entire time. His answers are short, and gruff, but he's surprisingly patient with her, for someone new.

Zakuro continually asks her questions about her time at the academy. She's happy to explain the new graduation process, straightforward evaluations of skill and proficiency, as well as the daily routine. Even if she doesn't have them herself— perhaps because she had to sit down and study other people's reactions and expressions, since she couldn't use her own as a guide— Kotone considers herself very proficient at reading body language and interpreting intentions; however, she can't identify the look on Zakuro's face as Momonga speaks. He's… sad, she thinks, but also not. It's confusing, and none of her business, so she puts it from her mind.

"Oh, and I forgot to mention," Zakuro says between mouthfuls of soup. "I went ahead and nominated you three for the promotion to Jonin. Sandaime should be getting back to me with that any time now."

Kotone and Zabuza stop in surprise, but Hatsuka had been taking a mouthful of food and ends up spraying fish broth all over himself. From Zakuro's sly smile, she's fairly certain he timed it that way.

/ / / /

Guard duty is uneventful as ever, so the three jonin brought their notes from the extra ANBU training classes they'd been attending. With Zabuza twelve, and Hatsuka and Kotone eleven, they're noticeable among the crowd of much older, seasoned ninja, but no one can argue with their performance, and there's as much envy as there is contempt in the looks they get from the other students. Kotone's the only one who bothered lugging the textbook out to the watchtower, but they've all brought their notes. Her own notebook is filled to the brim with careful diagrams and extensive notes, both from class and from the textbook. She can't always make out everything on the board, but what she writes from the lecture itself generally covers everything, and the textbook handles the rest. Hatsuka's notes are largely paraphrased reminders to himself that he copies from Kotone's after class.

Zabuza's notebook is empty save a few key points scrawled in an untidy hand. Writing distracts him from watching as intently as he'd like, and that's all he needs to retain everything. He has a general disdain for the way the whole thing's conducted, and it had taken a while for him to adjust to listening instead of doing. He's never been in a classroom before, she realised, watching how uncomfortable he was during their first lecture.

Zabuza's on watch duty, Zakuro is in the next room making do with the station's provisions (though every time she peeks in, he seems to be no further along in his sandwich. Honestly, he's been acting oddly for a while now), and Hatsuka's asked her to quiz him on the material. He cringes between each halting answer, but he's right. Kotone makes the decision to smile at him. It's not real, and Hatsuka knows it isn't, but she wants to communicate that he's done well, and that's how one usually does it. "You're very good at this. You just need to trust that you know it."

He smiles half-heartedly in return. She knows it isn't what he wanted for himself, but he's working hard to do what his family asks of him. He is never without the katana at his hip, another treasure from his family's armory, the exact style and weight as Ekirei. Recently, Risu had been drilling him relentlessly on its usage, and he'd been showing up to their own training sessions battered and exhausted.

She stands, stretching a little to work out the stiffness that comes from sitting in the watch station's wooden benches for too long. "Zabuza's shift's just about over. You should get some rest. I'll wake you when it's time."

Though it's still early in the fall, the summer heat has definitely ended and there's a chill in the air as she steps outside. The moon is full where it sits, low in the sky as the last tinge of sunlight sinks over the horizon. She finds him sitting over the railing, shoulders hunched.

"Let me guess. Nothing?"

"It's been three solid weeks of nothing," he grumbles, stepping back down to the walkway. "Hn. When they promoted us, I thought we were finally free of this pointless bullshit."

Kotone shrugs. "It's been a long time since we've had to. Hatsuka has advised me to think of it as a 'break.' Or at least, a good chance to study."

"Hn," he grunts again as he passes her.

It's just as he's about to set foot inside that they hear it, the tiny clinking sound that always makes her tense up for an instant. There are traps set up along each side of the walkway, tiny bells attached to wires that snake around the surrounding forest. They immediately locate the disturbed bell, the one whose trigger is two kilometers to the Northeast.

"You keep watch. I'm going to check it out," he tells her firmly before vaulting over the railing and disappearing into the darkness of the forest below.

Kotone sighs and starts to pace the walkway, careful to pay attention in each direction. The sea is calm to the southwest, the forest still and peaceful stretching out along the other sides. A moment later, the flutter of wings floats through the air amidst the sound of the crashing waves, and one of the village's shearwaters makes an unsteady landing on her proffered arm, webbed toes clinging. There's a message attached to its leg, and it takes off the moment she removes it.

"Zakuro-sensei," she calls, leaning back into the structure. "There's a message for you."

She expects his usual response to notices from the village, a lazy saunter over to read it whenever he has the time, but instead he barrels over and wrenches the note from her hand so quickly that she's nearly startled. He's been acting strange lately, but this has officially made her uneasy.

"Shit," he hisses under his breath as his eyes scan the page frantically. "Shit, shit, FUCK." He takes a few measured breaths to calm himself, running a hand through his hair. "Alright," he says, to her, and to Hatsuka who's slowly stood from the table to creep closer, his expression cautious. "Alright, so what I need from you today," the senior jonin says slowly, "is for you to all be **_really bad_** at your jobs. There's something going on, and… If someone— a konoha ninja— tries to sneak into the country tonight, you're going to **_let them_** , and you're going to let them **_right back out_**. Do you understand—" His jaw clenches, a muscle there twitching visibly. "Where the hell is Zabuza?"

"He went out to investigate an alarm," she feels herself shrink a little as Zakuro's furious gaze falls upon her.

"If that was the target, he **_cannot_** engage. Do you need Hatsuka's rats to track him?" he demands.

"No. I know where he's going."

"Then **_go stop him_**."

Kotone doesn't wait to be told again. She grits her teeth, takes a deep breath, and forces both the gates of opening and healing in quick succession, before leaping from the tower walls and taking off into the forest as fast as her legs will carry her.

/ / / /

After three weeks of stagnant, uninterrupted inactivity, Zabuza has just been itching for a real fight, and damn if this isn't it.

He's been careful to thicken the mist so slowly that, close as he still is to the shore, the young leaf-ninja hasn't yet noticed that something is amiss. Zabuza's been shadowing him for a while now, hidden by mist and the underbrush, as he makes his way through the forest. Towards Kirigakure no Sato itself, no less. Incredibly stupid, but Zabuza has to at least appreciate his nerve.

He can't be any older than Zabuza himself, fluffy grey hair spilling over the hitai ate tilted conspicuously over one eye, and Zabuza can only hope that he isn't as soft as he looks, or this will be over in a heartbeat. The mist has finally gotten thick enough that he needs to stop to reorient himself, and the demon slowly draws a kunai from its holster, breath held in anticipation, as he prepares to strike.

He stops dead as something very softly taps his shoulder.

He whips around and there's Kotone, crouched in the shadows beside him, fighting to keep her breathing quiet as supresses the urge to gasp for air. Slowly, her hand slips from his shoulder to the kunai clenched in his fist, and very gently lowers it, shaking her head.

He can't speak without alerting the konoha nin to his presence, so his only response is disbelieving scowl. She shakes her head more firmly.

 _New orders._ She mouths slowly enough for him to follow. _Do not engage._

He gives her a frustrated, questioning look back in return, and she shrugs with a more indifferent kind of puzzlement.

He grits his teeth, nose scrunching up in distaste but finally he re-sheathe the kunai and she lets go of his hand. They have to stay perfectly still, and quiet, until the leaf nin has left, picking up his running pace towards their village again.

Kotone lets out a deep breath as soon as its safe, finally pulling in desperate lungfuls of air she's needed. She'd really had to book it here, he notes, an eyebrow raised. "Alright," he says tersely when she's recovered, "you mind telling me what's going on?"

"Message sent from the village said that a leaf ninja would be trying to infiltrate the village, and we were to let him," Kotone starts back towards the watchtower, and he follows her, arms folded irritably. "That's all I know. Zakuro certainly knows something, I've never seen him so… agitated?"

"Hn," Zabuza nods. "He's been acting strangely for weeks."

"So that's all. Except…" she trails off, head inclined thoughtfully. "It doesn't explain much, but I believe I recognize that boy."

"Oh?"

She nods. "Hatake Kakashi."

"There's no one by that name in the Bingo Book," he asserts, and she shakes her head again.

"Not the ones they gave us in training. They've printed a newer edition since we started, and I've been reading Zakuro-sensei's updated copy. You know, for fun during study-breaks."

"Hmm. What fun," he rolls his eyes, and replies sarcastically, but mentally he's making a note to borrow Zakuro's book himself.

"It's a very recent addition, and there wasn't much there. Mostly he was added because of something unusual. His eye, the left one, the covered one? According to the book, it's— well, he doesn't seem to be an Uchiha so I imagine it must be an implant, but in any event, it's a Sharingan."

Zabuza feels a smirk tug at his lips beneath the bandages, eyebrows raised. "Well, he must be quite something to have you so frightened."

She looks confused, rather than embarrassed, eyebrows furrowed, and he feels something in his stomach sink. "Kotone, you're trembling."

"What?" she glances down at her hands, and sure enough, they're shaking. "Oh. Oh, it's just," she assures him, quickly crossing her arms to hide them. "I had to open two gates to get here fast enough. It's just the adrenalin."

Zabuza had started wearing the bandages for missions, but he's never taken the off at home, either. Increasingly, it seems to be most necessary to wear them around her, as she's become the thing from which he most needs to stay hidden. So he forces down the troubled, intuitive feeling rising in his gut, and says nothing. It's getting easier to do.

It's completely dark when they reach the station, forest lit only by the full moon. Hatsuka hurries them inside, and upstairs to the little 'kitchen' that was essentially a fridge, some cupboards, and a hotplate. Hatsuka sags a little with a huge, relieved sigh, when she tells Hatsuka and Zakuro, who's lingering in the room looking rather distracted, that she had found him in time. "Here, I made tea," he tells them, and when he pushes the cup into Kotone's hands, they're almost steady. She seems to need it, looking exhausted and eyes distant. He begrudgingly accepts a cup himself, and when Zakuro sits down at the little table to find both boys eyeing him warily (Kotone also manages to pull herself back enough to give him a questioning stare of her own), he has no choice but to explain.

"I suppose, if it's already underway, you're bound to hear about it soon. A few weeks ago…" he grits his sharpened teeth, and changes course with a sharp shake of his head. "I need you to understand, I objected vehemently," he says, staring into his cup of tea. "But I don't have the authority to override a decision made by the Mizukage. I was against it, Genji-san was against it, but Sandaime-sama simply would not be swayed. He was…. It was completely unlike him, but it was impossible to reason with him." Glancing around the table, Kotone has a look of subtle confusion but Hatsuka's expression of dismay is less restrained. Zakuro holds out a hand in a placating gesture. "I'm sorry, I'll get to the point. A few weeks ago, and ANBU team was sent to locate and abduct a ninja from konohagakure."

"That… That would be considered an act of war, wouldn't it?" Hatsuka's voice is low and his eyes wide. He shuts them, setting his head in his hands as though it were aching.

"Yes. Mizukage-sama is determined to enter the war, and he thinks this one move will give us enough of an advantage to establish a foothold in the Land of Fire. The target was Nohara Rin, a chunin-level medic. She's the only surviving teammate of Hatake Kakashi, the leaf-ninja you just encountered. According to our intel, he's dangerous enough that he could feasibly get into the village undetected. Fuguki was certain he would come to rescue her. The plan is to let Hatake think he's infiltrated the village, allow him to retrieve Nohara, and return to Konoha, perused by an unqualified ANBU squad that has been hand-picked to fail."

"Then…" The hot drink seems to have revived her a little. "It was bad information, right? That they want her to bring back to Konohagakure?"

"No," Misao takes a deep breath, shaking his head. "It was something much worse."

They sit in uncomfortable silence, Kotone sipping her tea, Hatsuka slowly seeming to fold himself in half. It's when he begins to shake that they realize he isn't just upset, and Kotone slides from her seat to crouch in front of him. "Hatsuka," she says, her voice still too cold to be considered kind, but she's speaking softly and her hand is gentle on his back. "Are… are you sick…?"

He shakes his head, fingers still entwined through his hair. "Something is wrong," he says finally, voice muffled by the surface of the table. "It's… there's something in the air, it's just….overwhelming, and everywhere. It's… I've never felt anything like this, it—" All of a sudden, he bolts to his feet, eyes wide and face pale, toppling his chair behind him. He's staring at the wall of the cabin that faces the sea, as though he could see through it. "What the hell **_is_** that?"

In the distance, a loud, plaintiff, droning sound rattles through the open door and through the building.

Zakuro's knuckles go white, the teacup shattering in his hand, but he doesn't seem to notice. Instead, he's watching Hatsuka with a kind of quiet terror. "No," he whispers at the sound. "This wasn't supposed to happen here."

"That's a tsunami warning," Zabuza jumps to his feet as well, starting at a run towards the walkway, but Zakuro's outstretched arm stops him.

"No, there's no time. Hatsuka, I need you to follow that power you're sensing."

They follow Zakuro down along the coastline at his top speed, though he's careful to stay on high ground as much as possible. The waves are impossibly violent as they slam against the cliffside, the water level dipping dramatically before a massive wave crashes against the rock, again, and again.

They soon reach the nearest village, the little fishing settlement beside the academy, in fact running directly over the place it would be underground. There's a shimmering violet chakra barrier protecting the entranceway, and the children inside, from the crashing waves, but the village itself was not so lucky, flooded to the tops of the highest buildings, the rest floating debris and frantic villagers, as massive wave after wave comes sweeping through.

"What took you so long, old man?" comes a voice from below, as a familiar figure smirks up at them, standing astride the rolling surface of the water easily. Zabuza's seen him wandering the Kaguya estate, eyepatch and the wispy beginning of a beard not quite as memorable as the great roll of exploding tags looping around his sword. His companion slinks out of the woods as though from nowhere, long gangly limbs taking him past them in only a few strides.

"Yes," comes the icy voice behind the mask, "you've kept us all waiting."

Looking around, Zabuza can see the other swordsmen dotting the landscape, together at once as though they had been waiting. They're all converging on something out at sea, the same spot Hatsuka is fixated on, and even Zabuza thinks he can feel, to some extent, the devastating power that has the sensor-type paralyzed.

"Sensei," Kotone begins quietly. "What… is that?"

It's massive, a huge beast that's causing the tidal waves as it thrashes in the ocean, it's body both immense and immaterial, something flickering and radiating as much as a solid form. Zabuza is rooted to the spot, fear creeping through him like icewater in his veins.

"That… is the thing they sealed in Nohara Rin. That," says Zakuro grimly, "is the Sanbi."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm assuming they have washing machines. Technology is already really iffy in the Naruto-universe, because there's a lot of things we know they don't have, but there are movie theaters, surveillance cameras, and we know they're like a few decades from having laptops. Basically, if we're 30 years out from what look like apple computers, I'm assuming anything that existed in the 1960s (without fundamentally altering the way the naruto world is set up, like guns or cars) is possible? Anyway! Thank you for reading, and I hope you're enjoying it so far :D


	10. Chapter 10

The second of stunned silence passes like an eternity. Zabuza finally tears his eyes away from the impossible **_thing_** thrashing offshore when the barrier protecting the Academy flickers. Zakuro’s jaw clenches as a familiar towering figure dashes away and outwards, something besides Samehada thrown over his shoulder.

“We’re going to take care of sealing the biju,” he says without taking his eyes off Fuguki, “get down to the village, do whatever you can for the people there.”

Zabuza nods curtly before hurrying down to the flooded ruins, Kotone already darting ahead faster than he knows should be possible.

The survivors are largely gathered atop the highest buildings, a few bobbing perilously in the floodwater clung to floating debris, tossed about violently with each crashing wave. Kotone is dragging two such victim to the group gathered on a nearby roof, reaching and shouting encouragements as they near, and pulling at them when they’re near enough, engulfing them in the crowd (he can tell by the way the water is no longer repelled beneath her feet that she’s shut her chakra gates again). Zabuza finds a small cluster of civilians desperately latched to the seat of an overturned boat, within the air pocket it forms, and drags them to safety as well. Fires have broken out around the ruined village as the wiring shorts and catches the few dry walls and furnishings. They navigate around them as best they can for time, douse them with huge torrents of suiton techniques when it can’t be avoided. It seems endless, back and forth, hunting for stragglers and collecting them, Hatsuka’s rats scurrying along the wreckage searching, until the rooftops are threatening to spill over back into the drink.

Ishida thanks him when he hauls his younger son to safety, but doesn’t recognize him.

The overwhelming barrage of chakra from the sanbi makes it difficult for Hatsuka to isolate any smaller signal, but slowly he’s becoming desensitized. Between his rats and his keen chakra-detection, the smaller boy is able to locate a few survivors within the flooded rubble of buildings. At length, it’s apparent that everyone who can be saved has been, and it’s time to turn their attention to the huddled survivors.

Kotone’s the one who starts righting the few intact boats and dragging them to shore, but actually getting them in is the difficulty; the villagers are paralyzed with fear. Earthshaking roaring rumbles across the water to drown out the sound of the waves, ferocious lightning strikes split the sky, one after another, as Ringo tries to chase the beast father out to sea. And while he’s no sensor-type himself, he swears he feel it too, not the way Hatsuka does (“It’s like screaming,” he tells them, “like looking into the sun, but I can’t make it stop.”), but as something instinctual, deep in his gut, reverberating in his bones, and perhaps they’re feeling it too.

He feels like a shepherd dog, staring down this terrified herd of wide-eyed charges, all watching him apprehensively, but with the knowledge that he’s all that’s keeping them safe. He’s young, but settles into authority so easily they can’t help but notice. When he gives them orders, they listen.

Slowly, they start shuffling their children and the most gravely injured towards the boat, and the three of them together can drag it to the edge of the flooded village in seconds, towards the little farm he remembers at the top of the hill, beside the road. A wail rises from the crowd when they turn to leave, the groaning of the injured rising with the cries of frightened children. Hatsuka can’t take his eyes off of them, heartache laid bare across his face. “I’m… I’m gonna stay here, keep everyone calm.” Hatsuka tells his teammates haltingly, heartened when they nod in return before rushing back out into the waves.

They split up to cover more ground, hauling boatloads of panicked civilians over the wild floodwater. Reaching the safety of the higher ground again, parents scramble over the sides and rush towards their children, all gathered calmly around Hatsuka. He has them facing the forest so they can’t see the creature ravaging their village, but he can still keep an eye on his teammates, as he distracts the children with the stories he tells his siblings, and the “cute big mice” he produces from his sleeves.

They’re helping the last of the villagers into the boats when an unearthly scream rattles across the ocean, shaking the air and seeming to pass right through him as a light brighter than Ringo’s lightning radiates from the beast and then collapses onto itself and sends a powerful shockwave whipping across the surface of the water. It sends a huge ripple through the floodwater, waves rushing up and then dropping the boat suddenly. He’s already run-down from the rapid and continual usage of chakra, but Zabuza’s remaining strength is enough to keep his footing on the water’s shifting surface and the little boat righted, though the passengers inside are tossed about as the massive waves gradually calm and then still entirely.

Slowly, blinking in bewilderment the frightened villagers peer over the edge of the now-steady boat, into the empty expanse of Open Ocean. They look to him for answers, but he’s only vaguely more informed than they are.

Nearby, Kotone’s similarly braced against one of the boats, and slowly, reluctantly, releases it, though poised to grab it again as if anticipating another tidal wave at any moment. He watches, eyes narrowed as she falters for a moment, one foot dipping beneath the surface of the water before she collects herself again, and when she starts for shore, her movements are slow, limbs heavy.

She’s closer to the shore and Hatsuka’s little survivor huddle, but he overtakes her easily and is waiting when she arrives, watches as she drags the little boat to shore running on nothing but willpower and the knowledge that it’s what she’s supposed to be doing. She had already been exhausted when they’d arrived back at the watch station, and now she only manages a few unsteady steps before collapsing onto the waterlogged grass.

“’m fine,” she mumbles when Hatsuka kneels to fuss over her, waving him off with a clumsy swipe of her arm. “Just need to…. lie down a little...”

“Fast asleep.” The other boy’s mouth quirks to the side disapprovingly as he drags her farther up the slope to drier ground. “She’s going to drown in that mud.”

Gradually, the assembled swordsmen make their way back to shore, all some degree of weary, and bloodied, and battered. He can make out the shapes of Jinpachi and Kushimaru, skulking away into the forest. Some, like Zakuro, mingle with the civilians, giving instruction and organizing a mass voyage to Kirigakure where they could be housed temporarily and their wounds could be treated. The able-bodied villagers have rolled an eerily-familiar cart from the little farm’s barn, and most carefully load their wounded inside while a few others hitch it to an old, ill-tempered, horse.

Fuguki still has something slung over his shoulder and it becomes clear, when he drops it with an unceremonious thud from his considerable height, that it’s a boy.

He’s barely conscious enough to react to the impact, slowly, groggily sitting up, blank pink eyes blinking slowly. Dull sandy hair falls into his face over ashen skin, eyes ringed by dark circles and a line like crude sutures down his left cheek that looks as though it’s been burned into his flesh.

Zabuza recognizes the much smaller man who wanders over to be Hiramekarei’s wielder, and he plunks down beside Kotone to avoid their attention as he eavesdrops. “Could you have possibly picked a worse kid?” the other man sneers up at Fuguki, nudging the unresponsive child with his foot. “This one was half-dead **_before_** we crammed the damn thing into him. He looks worse than Ringo.”

“Precisely,” he recognizes Fuguki’s slimy, falsely pleasant tone. “He’s a temporary measure. I wasn’t about to waste a **_promising_** student, and the younger the child the better the seal holds. He’s what, eight, nine?”

“I’m fourteen.”

A quick sidelong glance finds both the swordsmen caught off-guard, staring down at the little creature who had spoken. The boy had finally sat up completely, and was now staring up at the swordsmen meekly. “I’m fourteen,” he repeats timidly. “I’m going to be a genin in a few months, I’m just… I’m just **_small_**.” He can see it, now that he looks: the boy’s sickly, with a kind of unnatural frailty that suggests stunted growth, but older than Zabuza. Beside him, Kotone has an eye cracked open, and though she’s struggling to stay awake, she’s taking this all in as well.

Fuguki’s staring at him with a mixture of disbelief and rage, that’s hardly helped when Zakuro saunters over as though drawn to the scent of embarrassment. “They started taking older children when the curriculum… changed,” he beams. “Nice going, Fuguki.” The swordsman turns his attention to the boy, encouraging him to his feet though he doesn’t help. “Come along,” he insists too-cheerily. “Yes, that’s it, up we get. We’re all going this way,” he shoos the boy in the direction of the crowd ambling towards the road, a more insistent gesture prompting the two swordsmen after him, “got to get you back to the village, safe and sound. Stick with these two. That’s it.”

The bubbly façade deflates the moment they’re out of earshot, and Zakuro’s shoulders sag, his face in his hands as he takes a deep breath. “Well,” he begins with a heavy sigh. “I suppose I should be thankful it wasn’t worse. From what I hear, you both did brilliantly today. Zabuza, excellent work organizing the extraction, Hatsuka, fantastic job keeping the locals safe and calm. This could have been much worse,” he takes in another slow breath, looking between the two of them proudly. “Not every teacher gets **_two_** natural-born leaders on his squad,” his smile falters as his eyes fall on his third student. “Kotone, get up,” he snaps. “We don’t have time for this.”

“Sorry, Sensei,” she offers weakly as she hauls herself to her feet, keeping her eyes low as they set off with the rest of the displaced civilians and assorted swordsmen. Hatsuka nudges a soldier pill into Kotone’s hand, and she actually accepts it. The kunoichi’s looking more alert moments later, and Zabuza can go back to concerning himself with the snippets of conversation he can catch between the older ninja.

Zakuro’s away from Fuguki, and is chatting more amicably with a stout, bearded man Zabuza recognizes as Akebino Jinin, the owner of the Helmet-Splitter, Kabutowari.

“Sandaime-Sama was so sure,” he growls, brows furrowed. “The Sanbi has **_always_** reformed far out at sea, in deep water. Always well away from the shoreline. We were here as a precaution, but…”

Zakuro sighs, shaking his head. “I know. This wasn’t supposed to happen. The ANBU team better have killed that kid when the plan went tits up. If this gets back to Konoha…” Even from behind them, Zabuza catches the uneasy look they exchange at the thought.

He pauses when he notices a sudden absence beside him, and a quick glance over his shoulder finds Hatsuka crouching to the road, one of his rats frantically chattering as it scurries up his arm. The boy’s eyes go wide, and he glances from his teammates, to his sensei, who’s also stopped to watch him.

“Um,” the boy begins cautiously as he stands again, glancing towards the woods. “Sensei, you’re going to want to see this.”

Jinin offers to stay with the villagers, and with a quick nod of thanks, Zakuro’s ordered Hatsuka to lead the way, and they take off after him. They’re not darting through the trees for long before they come to a clearing, and even before he sees it, Zabuza’s startled by the unmistakable metallic smell in the air, overpowering even the fir trees surrounding them and the briny wind coming in from the ocean.

The clearing is drenched in blood.

The lifeless bodies of Kirigakure ANBU operatives litter the ground, some scattered, some in a great gory heap, holes in their flak jackets where a blade pierced straight through the reinforced material.

Zabuza can only take in the carnage with a kind of stunned disbelief. That the boy from the woods—Hatake, was capable of **_this_** by himself…? It’s not outright fear, and he refuses to call it jealousy, but the Demon is cautiously intrigued, and can’t help but contemplate the outcome if he’d been uninterrupted earlier.

Kotone’s creeping carefully through the battlefield, and he can see her tracing the fight through the footprints and impact sites and the pools of blood. She quickly finds one with no body to go with it. “This is a fatal amount of blood, especially for a smaller person,” she says decisively. “Nohara Rin died here. No sign of the body, but…” She inclines her head curiously, gently prods at the large imprint in the blood-slicked grass where someone must have knelt, or sat for quite a while. “Probably brought the remains with him. He must have killed her,” she muses. “When he realized what she was.”

Hatsuka grimaces. “D’you think? I mean, you don’t cross an ocean, break into an enemy village and then out again to rescue somebody, and then kill them. I mean…” he kneels beside her and then sits in a way that would make the same kind of indentation. “It… it looks like he **_held_** her. You don’t kill someone you care about.”

Kotone’s brows dip lower, in that distant puzzled look she gets and slowly shakes her head. “If it’s what the village needs you to do…” Hatsuka’s eyes widen in momentary surprise, and from the corner of his eyes Zabuza catches the distasteful twitch of Zakuro’s mouth. Zabuza himself has no doubt that, while she’d take no pleasure in it, she’d kill any of them if she was ordered to. It’s not something he perceives as a threat, or even an offence, just this immutable truth about her. That Kotone’s loyalty to the Mizukage is absolute and unquestioning is just something he’s always understood.

“Hatsuka’s right,” Zakuro interrupts curtly, giving the ghastly scene one last rueful  glance. “Konoha shinobi are encouraged to form bonds, and value their teammate’s lives, and camaraderie. The seal was supposed to prevent her from taking her own life, but seals have failed before. More likely, though, it was one of these idiots by accident, in which case they’re lucky they’re already dead,” his lip curls in disgust.

Hatsuka disperses his rats hunting in vain for another body, and though he picks up a trail that likely belonged to the boy from konoha, it ends at the coast. Zakuro sends them ahead to watch over the villagers and deals with the corpses himself.

It’s a long, quiet, march back to Kirigakure. The villagers are silent, and though he glances between his teammates every so often, even Hatsuka is silent. The three jonin are bringing up the rear to keep a careful watch on the horse drawn cart, and up ahead is a conspicuous break in the steady stream of weary villagers— a bubble of mistrustful civilians repelled by the single young boy staggering along between them. There’s a disturbance—the boy stumbles— and the crowd behinds him scatters, parts like a river around a boulder to edge past him as carefully and as quickly as they can while the exhausted child struggles to stand again.

Beside him, Zabuza catches the momentary pause of consideration before Kotone quickens her pace. The old farmer driving the cart starts, calls out a hissed warning to try and catch her attention, but the girl ignores him. He turns to them, face imploring, and gestures helplessly towards them. “Doesn’t she know what that ** _is_**?”

“She knows,” Zabuza replies flatly.

Kotone has never been afraid of monsters. Zabuza, of all people, would know.

 

/ / / /

 

He flinches when she comes up behind him, so she stops, and waits for him to calm again before speaking. Slowly the boy— older than she is, really, but he feels like a child more than she ever has— crack a pale pink eye open, studies her carefully, knelt beside him in the dirt road.

“I’ll carry you,” she says, and his face lights up, “it will be faster that way.” It feels wrong to let him think it’s a kindness when there’s nothing of the kind inside of her, to let him think she’s more than she is. The gesture purely utilitarian, as is everything she does. He nods, wearily, and she carefully helps him on to her back, lighter than he should be and bony joints digging in to her own thick muscle. She can feel that he’s trembling.

He slumps against her, face buried in her shoulder, and she soon thinks he’s fallen asleep. A deep groan soon afterwards proves otherwise, and a sidelong glance finds him grimacing in pain, eyes clenched shut. “I can **_hear it_** ,” he says weakly, and it comes out near to a sob. “What did they do to me…?”

“They sealed the three-tailed beast inside of you,” she says evenly, thought she suspects he knows this already, “it’s the only way to contain something like that.” She’s moving much faster than he could alone, long strides taking her through the nervously-parting crowd up towards where the rest of the shinobigatana have settled at the head of the group, the best-protected place to keep the jinchuriki. From the little whimpering sounds he’s making with each unsteady breath, the kunoichi is fairly certain he’s trying not to cry. “There’s another one, already. Utakata, I think his name is. He’s a lot younger than you, so I’m not sure if you’d get along… and of course, I’ve never actually met him,” the sounds have subsided slightly, and perhaps having something to listen to, to focus on, is helping to take his mind off of his situation. Kotone has never been good at friendly conversation, but she knows people who are, and does her best to imitate them, to try to be them for a moment. “I believe he’s Sandime Sama’s… nephew, or something similar. My understanding is that he’s being taught privately by a few very well-respected shinobi. That’s probably how they’ll train you, too.”

The boy’s quiet for a long moment, but she can still feel the tension in his body. “It’s talking to me,” he says finally, voice shaking. “What should I do?”

“I don’t…” she starts, worrying her bottom lip in thought. “Have you… have you tried answering?” She can feel him hesitate before settling back down against her shoulder.

His grip tightens in the dark fabric of her clothes, still quivering. “It’s… it’s saying they’re going to kill me,” he whispers. “That they’re going to put him in someone else, and I’m going to die. That’s… that’s what they were saying earlier, wasn’t it?”

“I… can’t speak to what Sandaime Sama’s going to decide,” she says carefully, feeling the note in his voice speaking to a rising panic. She should fall back and get Hatsuka. Hatsuka could deal with this. She isn’t good at this, at comforting people… but it’s her the jinchuuriki is clinging to, the cloth of her hapi his hands are fisted in. She can’t know if what she’s saying will calm him, but she can at least say something she knows is true. The thing that’s true above all else. “You were going to be a genin, soon, right? A shinobi. Shinobi all have to be prepared to give their lives, if the Village asks it. But, I don’t know if it will come to that. This is just… the task they’ve chosen for you.” Without thinking, she gently raises a hand to lay over his clenched fist, hopefully reassuring.

“Your hands are shaking,” he notes quietly, and it is, a combination of the exhaustion that comes with opening her chakra gates and a side effect from the artificial stamina she’s drawing from the waning soldier pill.

“I’m not afraid of you,” she assures him. “Shinobi are to give everything they have in service to the village. That goes for me, as well.”

He hums, quietly, thoughtfully, and she thinks she feels him go to sleep. She can only imagine the toll the sudden addition of a sealed tailed beast would take on a sickly-frail body like his. She can hear him muttering quietly to himself though, and wonders if it isn’t more of a trance as he converses with the beast. ‘Isobu’, she hears him say softly, again, and again. ‘Isobu’.

“Thank you,” he mumbles, gently, and it takes her a moment to realize he’s speaking to her, but he’s pausing, expectantly, and it’s a moment before she understands what he wants.

“Kotone,” she offers.

From the corner of her eye, she can see him smile at her. “My name is Yagura.”

/ / / /

 

Pale, morning light is rising on the horizon by the time the village is nearby, in sight but for the thick mist blanketing the road and forest. Yagura is asleep in earnest, breathing deeply and steadily against Kotone’s back. With Yagura asleep, and no need to speak, she’s felt bold enough to move closer to the famed swordsmen towards the front of the group, and has been quietly shadowing a particular petite kunoichi with spellbound attention to her every word and movement.

Zakuro had rejoined the group hours earlier, their pace slowed to a crawl by the large number of civilians, and she shrinks away a little when he advances, passes by her without a word to walk beside Ringo Ameyuri.

“Don’t look now,” she hears him tell her, likely assuming it’s too low for her to hear, with a tiny bob of his head in her direction and a roll of his eyes, “but you’ve got an admirer, Yuri.”

She suddenly regrets overstepping her station, intruding where she has no right to be, and something cold she can’t name settles into her stomach, prickles under her skin. She ducks her head and lowers her eyes, until a shadow falls across her sandals and she slowly looks up, surprised to find Ringo walking backwards, considering her with a sharp toothed grin. The last time she went to the Medics for a routine assessment, they’d told her she was five-foot-six, so she’s considerably taller than the legendary kunoichi looking up at her, not that it seems to phase her at all. Ringo’s confidence gives her the bearing of a giant, makes it easy to overlook the dark circles below each eye, her gaunt features. She’s paler than even Kotone. “Juzo’s told me about you,” she says, eyebrows raised. “Says you want to be one of us, someday.”

Kotone’s brain has gone blank and fuzzy, an unfamiliar feeling despite her frequent bouts of dizzying fatigue. She can only nod stupidly at the other kunoichi, blinking, stunned.

Ringo smiles, a bob of her head gesturing to the sleeping boy slung over her back with her sharp chin. “Well, you’re certainly brave enough,” she lets out a light chuckle as she turns back towards Zakuro. The sound catches in her throat and ends as a rasping cough.

There’s a warmth gathering in her face, Ringo’s smile, her acknowledgement, her **_approval_** fluttering through her thoughts in a loop she can’t— doesn’t want to— stop. Zakuro-sensei is never pleased with her, never praises her. She’s been training harder, and harder, pushing herself, breaking her body and exhausting her brain in an effort to improve, to be a better shinobi, a more useful weapon, but it must not be enough. He always has advice for Hatsuka and Zabuza, flaws he’s noticed in a strategy or stance, refinements to make their already impressive skills more lethal, more perfect, and though she’s eager for his guidance he either responds with a dismissive ‘good enough,’ or looks over her entirely, as though she isn’t there. It’s an ache, something cold and empty, failing to fulfill her only purpose. So this, the lightness, the warmth gathering inside of her is entirely undeserved. It’s wrong of her to want it so badly. She reminds herself quietly that it’s wrong of her to want at all.

Ringo’s started coughing again. It’s a deeper sound— wet, hacking, persistent. Zakuro starts at the sound, drawing close, hands held hesitantly towards her, but she waves him away, breath rattling in her chest, and presses on. She collapses just as the village gates become visible through the mist. In a frantic flash of movement, Zakuro has gathered her lifeless form into his arms, and darted away towards the village, towards the hospital, as fast as his legs can carry him. Kotone can do little more than watch helplessly, the other swordsmen looking on in grim silence.

Soon though, she finds a ninja that she knows as Suikazan Fuguki looming over her, one massive hand outstretched expectantly. She understands what he wants, and gently nudges Yagura awake as she sets him down, and Fuguki’s swept him away before she has a chance to say goodbye, as she understands would be polite, given their time together (however short).

The river of trudging civilians never stops its slow crawl forward, forking when they meet the nearest wing of the Mizukage’s sprawling complex— most towards the main building where they’ll be housed temporarily, the cart pulled around to the hospital. She loiters outside as they filter in, guided by frantic chunin barking orders, until someone taps her shoulder. She hadn’t heard Zabuza come up behind her, and mentally reprimands herself for her carelessness.

“Our orders are in,” he says gruffly, arms folded across his chest. “Reports of flooding and major damage are coming in all along the western coast, and the near side of the islands. We’ve got twelve hours to rest and repack while they draw up plans, and they we’re out again for disaster relief. Hatsuka’s already headed home.”

Her head feels heavy when she nods her understanding, limbs leaded as they start back towards the apartment. She hops in the shower as soon as she’s home, washes the ash, and salt, and mud from her hair and clothes, before wrapping herself in her largest towel and hurrying back to her room. She’d only meant to sit on her bed for a moment while drying her hair and daydreaming about what to finally fill her empty stomach with, but the next thing she knows something grasps and shakes her shoulder and she jolts awake.

She comes to her senses to find, to her horror, that she’s still in bed, and instead of early morning the sun is already setting again outside. Zabuza’s standing over her, backing away as soon as he sees that she’s awake and averting his gaze uncomfortably. “It’s time to go,” he says, studying her ceiling. “I tried to wake you earlier. I… couldn’t.”

She’s relieved to find that she’s still covered by the towel, but besides that one of her warmer blankets is thrown over her. Had she somehow wormed her way beneath it in her sleep, or…? “Sorry,” she replies, mortified, and he disappears immediately when she moves to lift herself from the cold damp bedding, soaked by her still-wet hair.

She throws on a clean set of clothes, before dashing around the house trying to pull together supplies for several-day mission before colliding with the full-pack Zabuza holds in her path. “There’s some food in there,” he grunts, still not meeting her eye, but given her embarrassing performance today, she can only assume he’s irritated with her. “Are you…?” He’s struggling with his words, a sharp breath filtering through the wrappings across his face as he starts to say something and then reconsiders again, eyebrows furrowed and eyes always very deliberately away from her. “Are you **_alright_**?”

Kotone grips the pack tighter, and though she’d rather keep her focus on it, forces her eyes up just enough to watch him through her dark lashes, head ducked timidly. “Sorry,” she repeats. “Thank you for getting everything ready— it won’t happen again, I promise.”

His eyes flicker towards her, brow furrowed in momentary confusion, and she can see a reply forming, can tell from the shifting of the bandages, from the sound of the breath he takes in, but he bites back on it. “Let’s just go,” he says instead.

/ / / /

 

Hatsuka’s mouth quirks as he glances from his soundless teammates to the rapidly darkening sky and back again. The jonin stretches, rocking back and forth on his heels as the uncomfortable silence only grows longer and Zakuro’s unusual lateness grows more perturbing. He sighs, slumping back against the gates when neither of his companions offer to fill the awkward stillness—Zabuza is very pointedly ignoring Kotone again, as she munches on a riceball from her bag, eyes downcast. He’s not sure what’s going on between them— presumably more that digging in to mission rations prematurely— but what he does know is that there’s no way he’ll get a straight answer if he asks. Instead, he contents himself trying to guess the time from the progression of the fading sunset colours down towards the treetops, if only to keep his mind from the fact that every second here is a second they’re not pulling villagers from the wreckage of the Sanbi’s rampage.

Finally, Hatsuka spots him coming up the sloping path to the gate. Beside him, Kotone leans forward, narrowing her eyes slightly as she peers through the dim evening light before recognizing him, hurriedly jamming the rest of her onigiri into its container and back into the pack before he reaches them.

Zakuro barely acknowledges them when he meets them, replying to Hatsuka’s greeting with a weary inclination of his head, and just keeps going, a few heavy walking paces before breaking into the running pace they’ll need to reach the nearest village as soon as possible, and they follow.

Hatsuka pushes forward after miles of silent travel, alongside Zakuro, and watches his face for any hint of an answer, worry plain across his own. The swordsman sighs at the boy’s concern.

“Ameyuri Ringo died today,” he says just loud enough to be sure the other two hear, as they near the shore, his voice dull and distracted. “She was seventeen.”  

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. It’s probably a terrible idea, but the sight of his unconquerable jonin sensei fighting back grief makes his stomach sink and his heart ache. “I didn’t know she was sick.”

A grim, humorless, smile tugs at his mouth like a twitch. “Ameyuri’s been dying as long as I’ve known her.”

The floodwaters have receded when they reach the village beside the academy. Instead, it’s a matter of rotting, algae-slicked wood and muddy ground complicating the efforts of the few villagers who stayed behind, and neighbours from nearby farms. Kirigakure shinobi are already at work. They’re to survey potentially unstable buildings, move the worst of the rubble, and any other feats needing extraordinary strength or a ninja’s skills, before moving on to do the same in the next village. From there, reconstruction will be solely in the hands of the village’s residents as they return to what’s left of their homes.  

Very little remains standing and salvageable. They spend forty-eight hours clearing the wreckage, Hatsuka recovering the remains of victims whenever he can, hoping that they will be given a proper burial when the community is restored. (In all likelihood the shinobi staying behind to return to the academy will simply burn them all in a great, unceremonious, heap as they do with ninja’s bodies, or dump them into the sea like dead academy students, but he can **_hope_** ). He’s always careful about his rats’ lives, the lives of the many tiny friends who are his constant companions, but they’re agile and competent and good at fitting into tight spaces, easily sniffing out the drowned and crushed remains of the unfortunate souls lost to the disaster. He largely handles this task while his much larger, more physically inclined teammates tackle the heavy lifting; however, Zabuza does drag the corpse of an old woman from the wreckage of a little shop. He and Kotone share a look as he pauses over the body, but they say nothing.

Zakuro’s sullen throughout their task, but a genuine grin flashes, razor-sharp, across his face as they head southward, insisting he knows somewhere they can rest for the night before continuing on. He leads them to a little cabin just off the main road, thick smoke rising from the chimney. According to the sign posted by the door, it’s a blacksmith’s, and Zakuro throws the door open and strolls boldly inside.

“Nobody at the counter, eh?” he calls loudly, still smiling. It’s almost obnoxious, a tone that would be embarrassing if it wasn’t so fond, didn’t seem to be drawing on some deep familiarity. “Aha. I see what kind of place you’re running here.” His voice is heavy with irony and reverberates off the wooden walls of the empty weapons shop. Hatauka catches himself staring at the gorgeous craftsmanship of the swords mounted on the walls, enough to rival that of his own family’s prized katana (almost). Cases along the sides of the store hold more common shinobi weaponry— kunai, shuriken, as well as more unusual weapons, all perfectly balanced and of superb make. His teammates are similarly preoccupied, Zabuza carefully turning a knife in his hand, eyebrows raised approvingly. Kotone’s face unreadable but Hatsuka’s always assumed that her interest can be gauged by the time she spends studying something, and she’s seemingly intrigued.

“Well, I’d recognize that pain in the ass’ voice anywhere,” a gruff voice rumbles from the doorway behind the counter that seems to open to a dark stairwell, and uneven, clunking footsteps on wood rattle along with it. The man who emerged from the stairwell was approximately Zakuro’s age, with thinning, steely-grey hair that may once have been black, and black eyes that gleam mischievously in spite of his rough tone. Despite his age, the man is powerfully built, a wooden crutch to his right beneath one thick arm.

His right leg ends just above the knee, the leg of his samue pinned up.

“Misao. The hell do **_you_** want?” he growls, but he’s grinning fondly as he says it and the other man leans in to deliver a good natured clap on the back.

“This,” their teacher tells them, warmly, “is Kajiya, a teammate from my own genin days, until, well,” he gestures vaguely towards the crutch and Kajiya rolls his eyes. “Couldn’t fight anymore, so he went from **_being_** a weapon to making them. Best in the Land of Water.”

“Damn right I am,” he says, slyly, “and those arrogant bastards from the Land of Iron can kiss my ass.”  

A quick set of footsteps pads up the stairs and a girl about their age peeks out from behind the blacksmith, her red hair pulled up and her face flushed from heat and streaked with ash. She’s gorgeous, and Hatsuka gives her a wobbly smile, which she returns shyly, and his stomach fills with fluttering.

Zakuro introduces them briefly as his former genin, introduces the girl as Kajiya’s adopted daughter and apprentice, Kiku.

Kajiya has Kiku bring them food down in his forge as he and Zakuro reminisce and laugh upstairs. It’s cramped, with the four of them in the basement eating and then napping between the equipment. Kiku sits dangerously close to the fire and the immense heat it spills into the room, but she only smiles when Hatsuka offers to switch places, and insists that she’s used to it.

Kotone is polite, but not outgoing, speaking when spoken to and answering with short, courteous statements that invite no further conversation. Zabuza says nothing for the rest of the evening, and Hatsuka notes a tension in his body, a kind of uneasiness in the feel of his radiating chakra, that had been growing since they left the village by the academy. From the way she’s studying him, Kotone sees it too.

They leave at dawn, Zakuro smirking at him knowingly when he lingers just a little too long between bidding Kiku goodbye, and actually leaving. Zabuza’s demeanour hasn’t improved, and if anything, by the time they reach the next village, his eyes have taken on a hard, distracted glint, betraying the intensity of whatever it is going on inside of him. The feeling Hatsuka gets through his chakra, if it were anyone else, he might interpret as panic.

“Do you know what’s up with him?” Hatsuka whispers to Kotone as they approach the fishing village and the villagers that come out to meet them.

“I might,” she says quietly. “But I hope I’m wrong.”

Zakuro greets the village leader, offers his sympathies for the catastrophe, and quick exchange outlines what’s been done and what needs doing. Zabuza stalks off the work before they’ve finished talking, shoulders square and eyes forward. Zabuza, whose gaze can be downright paralyzing, and he’ll level it at anyone, stubbornly, defiantly, but today he looks past the civilians as though they aren’t there, as though he can simply will them from existence with cold indifference. They start to stare, and whisper among themselves immediately, and though he’s there to help, Hatsuka feels an immediate surge of dislike for them. He has to listen to enough of Risu’s vile tirades to know how common those attitudes are, and though they’re hardly the first to look at Zabuza suspiciously, they’re certainly the most persistent.

Despite his efforts to ignore them, though, Hatsuka overhears a couple of women gossiping. “Does… does that not look like **_Kazue’s_** boy to you?” one says to the other behind her hand in an apprehensive whisper bordering on disgust. He furrows his brows in confusion but refuses to engage them, tries to forget he heard anything.  

Kotone gives him his space, interceding whenever a task involves cooperating or communicating with the locals, and Hatsuka follows suit. All the while, he can see her watching him carefully out of the corner of her eye.

This village was spared the brunt of the tidal waves’ devastation, only the homes and buildings directly on the waterfront damaged. The piers and all the docked fishing vessels have been completely destroyed, however, a common thread in all the reports from the affected settlements.

An awful creaking sound is the only warning before a building collapses, a careless team of overzealous civilians starting to try and repair it before it had been properly assessed. Zabuza’s closest, responding rapidly with a flurry of handseals. The pressure of the water bullet technique slams into the debris as it topples, forcing it away from the cowering men. Kotone reaches the site an instant later, even her impossible second-gate speed too late to have saved them.

There’s a younger man, perhaps in his late teens, among the otherwise middle aged group. Gasping and pale from shock, he blurts out a thank you, but the others do nothing but glare uneasily as the jonin turns and slinks away to work elsewhere. Kotone and Hatsuka deal with the rickety building.

They’re chatting amongst themselves in what they must think is a subtle tone, but it’s difficult to ignore, even over the sounds of grating concrete as they dig buried tools from the rubble and check for more precarious points.

“Yeah,” Hatsuka overhears one of the men, gaunt and bearded, tell the youth, gravely, “I guess you’re too young to remember Kazue, huh. The poor creature.”

“Why?” the boy asks, in that play-horror that sometimes disguises a thirst for scandal.

“She was weak in the head,” another adds with an awful grimace and a vague gesture temple-wards. “Wandered around in a fog, babbling nonsense. Saw things that weren’t there, started crying in the middle of the market once. It was awful, everyone having to stand around, pretending not to notice until she went away. Harmless, but… well, when she… **_died_** , no one wanted to take on another Kazue.”

Hatsuka’s been eyeing the group with abject loathing and a kind of sick feeling settled in his stomach as he works, but across from him Kotone has gone completely still.

“It just goes to show what happens when you get bad blood into the mix—” says the first one again with a contrite shake of his head.

There’s dead silence as Kotone stands and starts towards them, her strides even and her face an eerie blank.

“It’s my understanding,” she says to them when they notice her there and freeze, “that the accepted response is to thank someone when they pull you out from the wreckage of a fucking building.” Her is voice as dead and cold as her eyes, and she’s watching them, unblinking, unflinching, unnatural. “Of course, if you’re so averse to his help, I’d be happy to put you back under it.”

She excuses herself as they gape in horrified silence, turning and striding right back beside Hatsuka to pick up her work as though uninterrupted. It’s a moment before Hatsuka can join her, taking a second to stare in amazement because though there was no telltale fluctuation in her energy output, he’s fairly certain he just saw Ume Kotone get angry.

As rewarding as it was to watch, the thought of being on the receiving end of that icy rage sends a chill down his spine.

Now officially at war with Konohagakure (an **_enraged_** Konohagakure, by Zakuro’s estimates), Kirigakure can’t spare ninja of their caliber any longer. A bird arrives with a message ordering them back that afternoon, and Hatsuka’s never been quite so glad to see a village shrink into the distance. There’s an unspoken agreement between he and Kotone not to mention the village, or anything that had happened there, best for Zabuza’s bruised pride to pretend the whole ordeal had never occurred, that they’d heard nothing, learned nothing. The following months are a rush of frantic assignments, to the coast, to the islands bordering the Land of Fire, and occasionally— first reconnaissance and then increasingly bold missions into the Fire country itself, skirting dangerously close to Konoha. Their clashes with the leaf ninja become more violent, even as the war elsewhere dwindles. The ninja known as the Leaf’s Yellow Flash singlehandedly defeats a thousand Iwa-ninja, and the Tsuchikage finally admits defeat. Their conflict with Kirigakure, however, is not so easily ended.

The fishing villages destroyed by the Sanbi have been unable to recover in this hostile climate, the price of fish skyrocketing. Civilians and Ninja alike go hungry, but still Sandaime refuses to concede. Kirigakure, he insists, will fight to the last man. Even if they did surrender, Hatsuka doubts there’d be any mercy for them. Minato Namikaze is named fourth Hokage shortly after the Hidden Rock’s surrender.

He was Nohara Rin’s jonin sensei.

At least, Hatsuka muses to himself one night, holed up in a secluded patch of Fire-Country forest as Kotone bandages a deep gash in Zabuza’s arm, her hands shaking violently even hours after her chakra gates are shut, that things have gone back to normal between them. Nothing like a string of close brushes with death to clear the air.

They make it home and re-group at Zakuro’s place after handing in their reports. It’s mid-february and the old house lets in a persistent chill. He, Zakuro himself, and Kotone are going over the details of the next day’s assignment seated around his kotatsu (Zabuza’s reading over Kotone’s shoulder, stubbornly refusing to climb in with the rest of them. “Zabuza thinks he’s too cool to get cozy with us,” Hatsuka teases, mock-pouting and grinning when the scowl he receives in return is almost good-natured).

They hear footsteps crunching in the snow outside before the knock. They’ve been expecting Juzo back from a major assignment in the Land of Fire but the sound— the weight, the rhythm of the footfalls— is wrong, and Zabuza straightens and steps back from the kotatsu for a better vantage point from which to suspiciously watch the entranceway.

“It’s not locked,” Zakuro calls warily, pulling his legs from beneath the blanket to turn and face the door.

Hatsuka recognizes the man who enters by reputation. Zabuza had related his first encounter with him long ago, while he was still living with Zakuro, and the other was still under Ringo’s tutelage. Sea-green hair typical of the island’s population falls into his face, but his dark skin marks the man— Raiga— as partially foreign as much as his chakra does. He’d taken an interest in Zabuza when they’d met, but when the standoffish little demon had rebuffed him, he’d taken it very personally. Despite their mutual animosity, though, Raiga is completely ignoring Zabuza when he steps into Zakuro’s home, dishevelled and bruised, blood seeping through his sleeves in places, but despite that he’s smiling. It’s an unpleasant smile though, something rueful in it that makes Hatsuka uncomfortable. His eyes are shining with unshed tears.

Kotone shifts uneasily beneath the thick blanket, her focus on the newcomer and her eyes apprehensive. He knows how hard she works to ensure that her expression always matches her words, matches her voice, and Raiga… isn’t.

Zakuro stands suddenly, his jovial demeanour hardened into something dire and deadly serious. “Where’s Juzo?” he demands.

Raiga sighs, heavily. “Oh Misao,” he replies, voice thick with emotion, theatrically so. There’s something almost gleeful buried in his frenzied sadness, in the great joy he seems to take easing the thing he’s got hidden behind his back into the open, in Zakuro’s wide-eyed shock. The younger swordsman holds the shattered blade out to its former master, Kubikiri hocho reduced to the pommel and a foot of ragged metal. A tear slips free from his eye, rolling down the curve of his smiling cheek. “I have such terrible news.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think the assumptions I'm making about Yagura are a little out there but gosh darn, I'm sticking with it. Also watch the guy who had the fishswords totally be another blue fishman in the episode this week. I love that Kirigakure may just have this population of fish people. Like Innsmouth.


	11. Chapter 11

Every day, he expects it to be his last. He was scared at first, when Isobu had whispered into his mind what might happen, but it’s almost a familiar feeling when he accepts it. Yagura was always a sickly child— why his parents had picked him among their starving children to sell to the academy: the smallest, the weakest, the one who had little chance to survive anyway and would never be strong enough for farm work. Each morning, he’s expected to wake up weaker, and now he expects it to be the day they haul him away to pass the bijuu to a stronger host, besides.

Neither happens.

Quite the contrary, Yagura finds himself feeling better than he can ever remember; body stronger, mind sharper, freed from his frailty and exhaustion. It becomes simple to tap his massive reserves of chakra, unlike anything Yagura has ever felt before, as simply as he does his own. It is his own, now. Beyond that, he’s quickly becoming attuned to Isobu’s presence within him, how to think with another voice in his head, company rather than an intruder.

Isobu hadn’t meant to cause all that destruction. Yagura knows that the intentions of the beast likely hold little comfort for those who lost their lives, their limbs or their loved ones, but he can feel the other being inside of him and knows that he’s sincere.

Isobu had liked Rin. They’d been together for such a short time, but the three-tails had been a part of her, felt her warmth and goodness, and Yagura almost feels that he knows her himself through the echoes of those feelings that Isobu had brought with him.

The Biju had felt it when Rin had died, felt the pain, the cold creeping in as her blood seeped out. He’d only just pulled himself together from the brink of oblivion, lost, and confused, and the next thing he’d known, there had been powerful ninja attacking him on all sides.

“What happened to her?” The place inside of himself where he can convene with the tailed-beast is dark, but in secure sort of a way, safe and comforting. He sits afloat, across from the massive beast, tethered to the ground by chains glowing along each link with the same seals that are sunk into Yagura’s belly, binding them together.

“I don’t remember,” Isobu replies, in a voice more like a child’s than a monster’s.

His teachers are not unkind, though he can tell they’re wary of him. Yagura can see it in the way they won’t quite meet his eye, the stiff set of their posture. They’re handlers, really, people tasked with teaching him, protecting him from enemy forces, and, he’s fairly certain, protecting the general populace from him. He doesn’t mind, now, that they’re so cold. He has Isobu.

As far as the rest of the world knows, the Three-tails was lost to the depths into the ocean. They move him frequently around the Land of Water, always secluded places that are easy to defend, often high in the snowy mountains. News arrives from the village by bird, and though they’re always very secretive about any news concerning the war, he catches the most important things, like that the war was over for everyone but them because of the incident that had killed Rin. Or that three of their village’s strongest had been killed, and the other four injured, by a single Konoha **_genin_**. He hears his keepers’ hushed voices as they murmur about the incident, the kind of havoc a single person can wreak when they have access to **_that_** kind of power. For a long while after, Yagura catches them glancing back at him more uneasily than usual.

He’s learning too, of course, their undivided attention and his newfound strength both making him a far better student than he had ever been at the academy. Before long he’s performing advanced techniques with ease.

It just slips out, one day. He isn’t even sure where he has heard about the water dragon jutsu, and by their astonished faces, neither are they, but they teach it to him. He practices, and practices, along the shore of a lake facing inwards so the technique rolls thunderous but harmless across the water’s surface. Isobu’s voice is in his ear again, showing him as much as telling him how to focus his chakra, which handseals are redundant, until he’s streamlined the process and can fire it faster than any of his instructors.

He’s after them again immediately for more techniques, driven by some inexplicable thirst for more, more powerful ones, more lethal ones. Not to kill anyone, of course, oh no. There’s nothing bloodthirsty in the desire, though he’s sure that’s what his teachers must be fearing. It’s just an insatiable curiosity that’s suddenly consumed him.

At night, he dreams of a masked man. It happens more frequently, until it’s nearly every night, but the masked man orders Yagura to forget him, and he’s compelled to obey the stranger. The moment he wakes, the dream has evaporated like breath in cold air, and he’s left with nothing but the vague impression of a single, red, eye.

He works with Isobu to create techniques of his own, things that could never exist outside of their perfect symbiosis: coral blossoming from his palms, water pressed into a perfect mirror.

Something changes when he sits with Isobu. The darkened vault of his soul no longer feels private. There’s something lingering with them, something imposing, and ominous that silences them both, refuses to allow its presence to be acknowledged.

He can’t stop thinking about Nohara Rin. Inside of him, Isobu thrashes against his restraints.

As he dwells on the kunoichi he never met and the last moments Isobu can’t remember, day by day, he can feel something spreading through him: rage. Someone **_else’s_** rage, echoing through his brain with no anchor, no reason. He knows what it is to have a foreign thought in his head, but this is not Isobu, and Isobu can feel it too.

He starts to lose time. Just missed seconds, at first, but soon there are hours he can’t remember passing.

And though it starts to occur to him that something is wrong, he can’t bring himself to act on it. _This is right,_ say the thoughts in his head he knows are not his own. _This is how it should be._

Besides, he thinks, he knows what will happen if he does turn to his teachers. They’ll think the jinchuuriki has lost his mind. _They hate you,_ the stranger inside of his head tells him. _They all hate you._

And Yagura hates them. He hates the teachers keeping him at arm’s length when he’s done nothing to deserve it; hates the civilian people who can’t tolerate a creature like him their midst, even though he’s the only thing keeping the tailed-beast at bay; hates the people who took his life from him, who made him a monster.

Even as the loathing seeps through his veins, even though he feels it whenever he sets eyes on the jonin watching over him, he knows it is not his. It’s synthetic, transplanted, but still it’s overpowering.

He can’t hear Isobu anymore.

He can’t hear himself anymore.

The world is a grey haze, his awareness dulled to nothing, his body continuing along as though everything was alright, guided by muscle memory and the thing possessing him— the strange thing possessing them both. Words he doesn’t think slipping from his lips, movements he didn’t instigate dragging him along like a doll. Like a puppet.

The presence’s greatest strength is in convincing him not to fight, to make him forget himself entirely. But sometimes, for just an instant, he can claw his way to the surface.

Yagura, dazed and disoriented, finds himself gasping for breath in an unfamiliar room, dark except for the moonlight spilling through the large window. The walls, the ceiling, his hands, are all dripping blood. Someone in the doorway is screaming.

The current drags him back under.

/ / / /

 

The Fourth Hokage, as per his reputation, is not an unreasonable man. When the Fourth Mizukage, with the Village Elder’s gentle insistence, sends a message asserting himself as the new leader and requesting an end to their hostilities, the reply he receives is swift and the terms are sensible. Both villages withdraw their forces from the other’s country, and they mutually resume their former frigid neutrality. A few weeks later, the nine-tails sweeps through Konoha, and Konoha’s Yellow Flash is dead.

When Misao finally meets the boy-Mizukage, he’s convinced that Genji must have done everything but sign the letter sent. Yagura has all the charm of a burnt-out lamp post, and isn’t half as warm.

The floor of the Kage’s office is bare concrete, the previous carpet ruined with blood and brain matter and no one has bothered replacing it. In the wake of Might Dai’s onslaught, Kabutowari had been lost when Jinin was killed, and the six remaining swordsmen, including the newly appointed Mangetsu, kneel on the floor as they are called in. Kushimaru and Jinpachi, young and brash, don’t bother, instead looming over the tiny kage and greeting him disdainfully.

Without so much as a muscle twitching in his face, as simple as snapping his fingers, Yagura calls the sanbi’s chakra around him, three ephemeral tails of bright energy flickering impatiently behind him.

The Heartless duo slink, quietly, to the back of the room and take a knee.

Too old to genuflect, the village elder bows as deeply as his back will allow, and instead, Genji leans against his staff. Finally Nezumi Risu skulks into the room, unusually quiet and startlingly sober.

“The Third is dead,” the boy says in an eerie monotone. “I am your Kage now. You will obey me as you obeyed him,” he pauses, considering them, watching for any twinge of dissent. The demonstration a moment earlier was enough to make even the least cooperative of the swordsmen reconsider, and he gives a vague little nod of his head that may have been approving. “I’ve called you here because you are the very best the village has to offer. My strongest warriors, my wisest advisor,” he gestures to Risu and Mangetsu in turn, “the heads of our last great houses. And I, after all, am just a boy,” Something in his voice, in his eyes, sends a shiver down even the hardened swordsman’s back, and it’s hard to see him as anything but a monster in a child’s body. “I’m going to need all of your counsel to lead this Village.” It’s a token gesture. His tone leaves no room for argument.

“There’s been talk,” he continues, unnaturally still, “of an assault on Konohagakure following the attack by the Kyuubi. Allow me to put this to rest immediately. I have no interest in starting another war. I have little interest in anything beyond our borders. My primary concern is maintaining order within the Land of Water. Perfect order.”

In his voice, it sounds like a threat. If Zakuro hadn’t already had a bad feeling, he certainly would now, and he can catch the others glancing surreptitiously between themselves.

“The other issue I’ve heard proposed is the graduation exam. Given a change in leadership and the end of the war, I’ve heard it suggested that it be reinstated.”

Misao’s eyes widen imperceptibly, his lowered head darting up in surprise. There was certainly grumbling amidst the ranks when it was suspended, but as far as Misao’s aware, this is Yagura’s first real audience with any of his ninja. He has no idea how he’s hearing this and, given that behind him, Fuguki looks equally perplexed and Genji looks horrified, it wasn’t from either of them.

“I say do it,” Risu sneers, his bow more of a casual lean against his knee. “We’ve been churning out weaklings ever since.”

“I, respectfully, disagree,” Mangetsu speaks carefully, not yet familiar with any of them but certain enough in his skill and his position as the leader of his clan, young as he is, to be self-assured. “While I’m not adverse to the test itself, it would be best not to resume if you want to avoid conflict with Konoha. While everyone’s always suspected how we’ve done things, now they **_know_** —”

“Thanks to your little demon brat going berserk and dumping all the cats out of all the bags, Misao,” Risu interjects bitterly.

“—Konohagakure has been especially vocal about their disapproval.”

There’s a grating laugh from the back of the room as Fuguki lets out a disdainful chuckle. “Oh please,” the intelligence division leader says, “Konoha can have Root or they can have their high horse, but not both.”

“You’ve never been able to prove it, Suikazan. It’s like Mangetsu-kun says,” Raiga chimes in brightly, “we suspect; they **_know_**.”

Yagura watches the banter unflinchingly, still standing exactly as he was when they’d come into the room, his face a listless mask. He raises his voice slightly to catch the Kage’s attention over the others’ bickering. “They’ve threatened sanctions in the past, Mizukage-sama,” Misao adds. “With the war over, we could finally restore trade with the Land of Fire. And besides,” he takes a deep breath, looking their leader in the eyes for any signs of life. “No one’s worth can be measured by a single fight. I know; for years I watched them all. The better fighter stumbles, the weaker one gets a single lucky hit… And people tend to improve when you give them the **_chance to learn_** ,” he says fighting back the bitterness he feels rising in his throat. “A solid team with proper training can do wonders for a weak student. Your nephew is a sterling example, Risu,” he says without looking away.

And just for an instant, he swears he sees something in their kage’s lifeless eyes. He dismisses them, orders them from his office so he can have a moment to think. A moment later he peeks from around the office door to let the few ninja interested enough in the verdict to stay know that he’s decided against the old test.

Only years of experience allow Zakuro to keep the immense relief he feels flooding his heart from showing on his face.

 

/ / / /

 

Every class, Kotone seems to move a little closer to the blackboard, her teammates plunking down beside her (Hatsuka to sit beside her, Zabuza because he would rather not sit next to anyone else). “ _Nerd_ ,” Hatsuka stage-whispers with a sly grin as she stands, mid-lecture, and hurries down the final few stairs to the very front row.

There was only a brief delay in the training schedule following the assassination and subsequent replacement of the Third Mizukage, everyone anxious to return to business as usual, nervously pretending that nothing had changed. No one’s really seen the jinchuuriki since the Third’s demise, locked away in his office and allegedly answering inquiries and assigning tasks through the door. If Zabuza’s correct, Zakuro’s currently in the middle of Yagura’s first audience with anyone.

While no one’s said it outright, there’s a hushed sense of horror settled over the village. But really, as far as Zabuza is concerned, it makes little difference that he murdered the Third. No sense being squeamish when everything else The Village Hidden in the Mist does is drenched in blood. Why would succession be any different? If Sandaime was weak enough to be killed, he wasn’t fit to lead.

It’s difficult to reconcile the takeover with the snivelling, trembling boy Kotone had carried home from the wreckage of the Sanbi disaster, but he can only imagine (and oh, he imagines) what that kind of power could do to one’s temperament. Whether his frailty had left him vulnerable to the whims of a bloodthirsty monster, or if Yagura was more formidable than he had assumed, and had harnessed the beast’s power for his own gain, Zabuza can’t yet be sure. Officially, he’s reserving judgement until he has a better sense of the boy. Privately, his opinion has settled somewhere between resentment and outright loathing. The village’s foreign missions have simply stopped coming in, the concerns of their country alone leaving little work for anyone. Their coastal villages lie in tatters while their Kage hides in his office. Between the famine and the faltering of their military power, he can already see the village starting to wither.

His roommate, for her part, has said nothing on the subject. She had barely reacted when they had received the message calling them back from the Land of Fire. Kotone is loyal to the institution itself; the man calling himself Mizukage is incidental.

“A weapon doesn’t complain when it changes hands,” is all she says when he had offhandedly noted her indifference during the ferry ride back to their country.

“I can tell you for a fact that Samehada **_does_** ,” Zakuro had interjected, looking up from his work cleaning the newly-reformed Kubikiri Hocho. It had taken a long time, and a great deal of blood, to restore it fully. He’s been waiting until then to appoint a new protégé.

Zabuza has long since stopped paying attention to the man in the teal-steaked ANBU mask lecturing on vital points and the most direct route to the heart, the lungs, the spine, major blood vessels, other things he already understands backwards and forwards. They’re finally nearing the end of the highly specialized ANBU training, the exam dates set little more than a month away, where their skills in combat, tracking, anatomical expertise and cadaver obliteration would be evaluated, and they’d be assigned to the Assassination Division; carrying out the most highly classified covert operations, both domestic and foreign; or the Hunter-nin, tasked solely with the capture and destruction of traitors.

In front of him he catches the tiniest bob of Kotone’s head, and she snaps back to attention. A moment later she’s chewing on her own hand, little fangs sunk deep into the skin, something he’s seen her do to keep from nodding off. She’s been stretching herself thin since Biwa’s death, studying and training with him for the ANBU assessments as well as heading out at all hours for extra training, between their actual missions, to try and prove her worth to Misao. Zabuza’s stepped up his own training to keep from falling behind, because even without both gates open (and it’s embarrassingly easy for her when they are) it’s getting to the point where rather than their consistent stalemates, she can overpower him more often than not.

It doesn’t sit well with him, but of course, that’s only hand-to hand. He can’t remember the last time he’d even **_seen_** her use ninjutsu, and with the battlefield cloaked in mist, not even Misao can rival him.

Still, she’s running herself ragged trying to prove herself to the old man, and Zakuro can’t possibly be stupid enough not to have noticed. He’s asked them to meet him at their old training field after their lesson and his meeting, and given the gravity of his tone, there’s only one possible reason for calling them together so formally. Kotone’s been fidgeting all day, growing visibly tenser as their class ticks to and end and they make their way to the designated spot.

The meeting must not have been a long one, because Zakuro’s already waiting when they arrive, the massive blade propped up against him. He gestures for them to sit, doesn’t complain when Zabuza instead leans against a nearby birch. Hatsuka collapses, crosslegged, beside the tree in a tangle of spindly limbs, as Kotone kneels neatly and proper, beside him. The smaller boy grins and nudges her shoulder, but she lacks his certainty and can only give him a faltering little smile in return. Hatsuka was only invited as part of the team; he himself is out of the running to be Zakuro’s successor, already in line for Ekirei and heir to his own family.

“I think you all know what this is about,” Zakuro begins, his thumb trailing absently along the dull bottom edge of the blade. “Might as well get to the point. Since Juzo was killed, I’ve given a lot of thought to his replacement as **_my_** eventual replacement,” he takes a breath, a sharpened grin spreading across his face and before he can even finish, it dawns on Zabuza that the swordsman’s gaze is fixed entirely too high. “Zabuza,” he says, “you and I have a lot to discuss.”

He’s not sure why his immediate response is to take stock of Kotone’s reaction. She’s perfectly still for an instant, face completely blank for the moment it takes her to collect herself and manufacture a reaction. But she turns to look up at him with a smile that’s too warm to be real, and she congratulates him. He has no doubt that she means it, as much as she can mean anything.

Hatsuka's surprise is more tangible, blinking and slacked-jawed expression slowly giving way to a confused little grin while he also carefully monitors the kunoichi from the corner of his eye. "Yeah, congrats, man," he agrees, "you're going to be great." He stands to deliver a good-natured clap on the back, but reconsidering when the other boy's shoulders square visibly at the impending contact. Otherwise, Zabuza's too focused on their instructor to react more concretely. He levels the older man with a suspicious glare, because while he has shown a kind of interest in Kubikiri Hocho, as he does anything sufficiently powerful and useful, Misao knows full well that he holds no admiration for the Mizukage's elite little club of attack dogs and has already managed to antagonize several of the existing members. Zakuro is immune to the scrutiny, still smiling easily, his eyes never dipping to the girl still kneeling in the grass.

He then sets off towards the Kaguya District, motioning for Zabuza to follow, and as the boy slowly trails after, he decides to pause and ducks behind a cluster of trees when he catches the distant look in the kunoichi's eyes, staring dully downwards at nothing in that way she sometimes does. He knows that her instincts are all still in place and if he were to throw a punch, muscle memory and reflexes would immediately come into play. It's Kotone herself that's far away somewhere, and it takes Hatsuka a few tries to get her attention when he crouches beside her.

"Hey, you know what we should do?" he says, just a little too brightly, when she finally seems fully conscious of his presence at her side. "An oden cart opened up by the assignments office entrance a little while ago, and I've just been dying to try it! Let’s go, just the two of us. It's mostly vegetables, I hear, 'cause of the price of meat and all, right now, but...but anyway, it sure smells good when I pass it. It'll be fun."

It's clear that she understands his intention when she looks up at him and stares, though gently, until his cheery front waivers. "Hey, I just wanna make sure you're okay, alright?"

"Of course I'm alright," Zabuza catches her reply quietly. “I don’t get upset… And besides, why would I be? I think you're right. Zabuza will be excellent.” She pulls herself to her feet and lets Hatsuka steer her from the training ground, and Zabuza stops stalling and starts away before they notice he’s still listening in. Between her soft tone and the distance as he draws away, he can just barely make out what she’s saying when she turns to Hatsuka again.

“Zakuro-sensei has never liked me, has he? I just… I don’t understand what I did wrong.”

He’s not sure exactly what Hatsuka’s hurried attempt to change the subject is, but it ends with him chanting “o-den, o- ** _den_** ” and hastening down the street with her in tow.

 

/ / / /

 

He doesn’t bother knocking, and Zakuro’s door is unlocked when he barges inside. The man himself is, predictably, hovering by the stove and the kettle warming upon it. In an instant his shoes are off, a reflex more than a courtesy, and he’s waiting, silently glaring at the back of the swordsman’s head, until he finally turns to look at him.

“Why me?” he demands, cutting the older man off before he can start whatever stale, hospitable, pleasantries he was about to initiate, teacup in hand.

“Not sure what you mean,” the older man replies innocently, leaning against the counter.

“Kotone’s the obvious choice, so why me? She’s bigger than I am.” He gestures, with a jerk of his head, towards the massive blade resting against the wall.

“She’s a fourteen year old girl,” Zakuro replies casually, shrugging as he pours himself a cup. “She’s done growing, you’ve just started. You know that, though, don’t you? So what’s the problem?”

His jaw works behind the bandages, trying to force the words from his mouth, despite the developing instinct urging him to keep it in, that this thought is a step too far, too close to the human, beating, heart he’s determined to bury. But if there’s one thing he understands, it’s **_wanting_** , even if he can’t get his head around the desire itself. Not for the power or the status, but just for the chance to serve the Mizukage directly. For confirmation that she’s doing as good a job as any ninja can be. Of course, she likes food, she likes sleeping—physical imperatives. She’d ** _like_** to have a cat, but he only knows this from the way she watches them. It’s this alone she’s dreamt of, asked for, **_pursued_** for herself. “It’s the only thing I’ve ever seen her want.”

“But you’re not turning it down,” Zakuro says, still smiling, and a satisfied little chuckle rises from his throat when the boy’s jaw clenches behind the cloth wrappings, but he says nothing. “That’s what I thought. It’s touching, though," he says, smirking wickedly as he watches the steam rise off his drink, “that you’re even so faintly concerned for her ‘feelings’.”

Indignation prickles beneath the boy’s skin, his body storing the feeling away as another reminder of what happens when he leaves himself vulnerable in even the smallest way. “I’m **_not_** ,” he insists forcefully, eyes narrowing. “What I am, is certain that you have some kind of agenda, and I want to know what it is.”

“Such a suspicious little creature,” Zakuro’s eyebrows tip upwards, his tone mock-wounded. “You think there’s a catch?”

“There’s **_always_** a catch.”

Zakuro studies him for a moment, his condescending smirk shifting to lightly impressed. He gives a terse little chuckle and a conceding nod of his head. “I knew I liked you. Alright, then. Years ago, I told you that you weren’t the only one who was angry. You remember Kajiya, right? My teammate? Ages ago, in the early days of the Second Mizukage’s reign, we still used consistent three-man teams. Well, there was myself, Kajiya, and—”his hands curl into tight fists at his sides, “and Tsukiko. She… she used to live here.” He gestures with a sigh to the ancestral Kaguya home, the only one in the compound that had been restored, been cared for, right down to the meticulously preserved garden— willows, clematis, camellias.

The older man sighs, smoothing a hand over his pulled-back hair as he takes a few lethargic steps to the kitchen table and plunks down, motioning for Zabuza to sit opposite him. The boy accepts, though his posture remains tense in his seat, gaze intent and relentless. “Soon after I became a jonin—hell, somewhere like thirty years ago, now, while the Second was still in power— the three of us come back from a brutal mission in the Land of Earth. We’d been away for months, had no idea what had been going on back here. So poor Tsukiko comes home, happy as anything, rushes off to see her family while we handle the paperwork. It’s just as we’re leaving that the screaming starts. Kajiya and I jump the wall. There are all these… way too many ninja back there, none of them were Kaguya. We make it just in time to see a few of them force Tsuki to her knees, and—” he takes a slow, tremulous breath, his eyes absently panning over towards the sword where it rests against the wall. “She’d managed to build these…” he gestures vaguely to the back of his neck, “plates, under her skin. She didn’t have time for anything else, but Kaguya bone is damn near indestructible… The Executioner’s Blade still went right through them.” He pushes some wayward strands of his hair back, sighs again. “Tsukiko fought like a demon; it took four jonin to hold her down, and they’d never have been able to do it without catching her by surprise.” There’s a far-away look in his eyes, a glimpse of a proud little smile visible through his resentment and bitterness. “She was Kaguya, after all— fierce, and proud. But Tsuki was a kind soul at home, gentle with things she cared about. Her family, her friends, her flowers…”

Something’s dawning on him as he watches the older man, ignoring his tea across the table. He’s seen that look in his eye before, that forlorn, protective way he speaks about her. “Ringo reminded you of her,” he asserts, carefully watching his reaction.

“Lose someone you love; tell me if you don’t start to see them everywhere.”

Zakuro was in love with her ** _._** The boy can do little more than sit in stunned silence as he processes the admission. He’d suspected, from the way he spoke of her, but to hear it out loud. He says it so **_casually_** , like it isn’t a glaring admission of weakness. As though it were **_permitted_** to people like them ** _._**

“I don’t remember much after that. We rushed them— the man with Kubikiri Hocho, Kabu, took Kajiya’s leg clean off. And then Risu, the little bastard, stabbed me from behind.” His hand trails down the front of his black samue, just shy of his heart, above a straight scar Zabuza’s seen on all of Zakuro’s forced trips to onsen as part of his ongoing efforts to civilize the orphans in his care. Its twin on his back indicates something had gone straight through him. “Risu was still in training at the time, so it wasn’t poisoned. I honestly didn’t expect to survive, certainly didn’t expect to wake up in the hospital next to Kajiya. Apparently Kabu reasoned that we had no way of knowing what was going on, and so our reactions were justified. More than that, he’d been **_impressed_** by me, asked me to **_train_** under him.”  
  
Zabuza sits stalk still in his seat, resisting the urge to fidget, unsure why he’s the one feeling exposed and uneasy when it’s the swordsman pouring his heart out. He’s inclined to simply get up and leave, the barrage of Zakuro’s personal life and feelings reading as the kind of vulnerability he’s fought to reject— that **_Zakuro_** had taught him to internalize and bury. But it’s information, what’s always just below the surface of Zakuro’s controlled façade. “And you accepted,” Zabuza replies, eyebrows furrowed, “even though it’s—”

Zakuro nods, slowly. “The blade that killed Tsukiko, yes. It… The sword took her head, but she damaged it. It repaired itself with her blood, it’s… it’s the only part of her left anywhere. Besides, Kubikiro Hocho is just a thing, Zabuza. A tool. It’s pointless to be angry with a weapon. Honestly, it was pointless to be angry with Kabu. He was just a weapon in the Second’s hands. Even before the graduation exam, we had that kind. I think he knew I wanted to kill him when I accepted his offer. I don’t think he had it in him to care. But I was able to control myself, to wait, until I had the training I needed from him, until I could get closer to what I **_really_** wanted instead of throwing my life away over a pawn. Kabu… “died”… while we were overseas on a mission together,” the man’s expression grows wry. “People had suspicions, of course, but even if they were true, I’m certainly not the first to earn their place in the Seven Swordsmen that way. I suppose I shouldn’t be giving you ideas, but it’s fairly obvious when you want to kill someone.” The scowl he receives in reply only encourages him, but his smile is gone an instant later when he studies the ancient, stolen, house around them, and has to resume his explanation.

“I don’t know if the Kaguya had, or hadn’t been planning anything, but that was the reason they gave. It was a huge family, and Tsukiko was so far out of the inner circle that she wouldn’t have known anything about it if they were, but the edict was for every last one of them, so he’d been waiting for her to return,” he gives a bitter little chuckle. “And honestly everyone was already keeping their distance. Fear of bloodline abilities predated the founding of the village, so everyone was perfectly happy to believe that they’d been conspiring. The other families became even more insular and secretive, fearing they were next, and they were right. The Yuki clan went soon after that. If I was a **_cynical_** kind of a person, I’d say it was primarily so the Second could distance his own family from them. Then the Third wiped out the last Boil-release and Lava-release users after the Second died. He’s the one that started the fights to the death between academy students. I couldn’t stop any of it. The Second is dead, but the Third was just more of the same. And now… well. Tell me, what do you think of Yagura?”

“I can’t say I’m impressed, thus far.”

Zakuro’s eyebrows tip upwards, eyes gleaming. “Do you think you could do better?”

Zabuza’s quiet for a moment, his expression the careful deliberation of a man choosing his words very carefully. “I don’t think I would do any worse.” The smile spreading across the other man’s face is smug and predatory, and Zabuza glares irritably in response. “You’re the one that’s met him, you tell me.”

“Let me put it this way: I have a newfound appreciation for how **_warm,_** and **_compassionate,_** Kotone is.”

His eyes narrow slightly, just a critical twitch. “Kotone thinks you hate her, and she’s right, isn’t she? You barely look at her; you’ve always given her the worst assignments…”

“I don’t ** _hate_** Kotone,” Zakuro says, rolling his eyes and shaking his head, but there’s a serious note in his voice anyway. Just the beginnings of regret. “She’s just… a particular kind of person.” The boy’s jaw tenses beneath the cloth wrappings. He’s been paying enough attention to know exactly what kind of person that might be. “I’ve been doing this for a very long time, and you learn to spot the ones that aren’t worth investing the time, or effort. We’ve gone out of our way to make as many like her as we can, weed out anyone like Hatsuka, and where has it gotten us? You know no other village needs an entire unit devoted to traitors? We manufacture as many soulless killing machines as we can manage, teach them that there’s no value in the lives of their comrades, no reason to care about anything, and then we’re surprised when they defect the second they get a better offer. We can’t go on like this. Giving Kubikiri Hocho to Kotone would be as good as putting it into the hands of Yagura himself, and I think you can tell by now, that isn’t what I want. You, though… well, you’re a little troublemaker, aren’t you? So,” he grins as he pushes away from the table and stands, his sharp teeth gleaming in the dying evening light, “what do you say we make this official?”

 

/ / / /

 

The take-away container of takoyaki has long since gone cold when he hears her key turning in the door. Zabuza glances up from the anatomy textbook splayed open on the couch beside him, and his suspicions that she’s been out all night training to the point of exhaustion again are confirmed in the sweat plastering her hair to her face and the notable tremor in her hands.

She acknowledges him quietly, trailing off when she notices the massive weapon cluttering the small living space, a momentary startled flicker settling back into her usual calm. Hauling it up to the apartment without destroying the stairwell and their doorframe had been training in and of itself, and Zabuza suspects that’s why Zakuro had insisted he take it for the night.

Silent footsteps take her across the room, creeping over to inspect the carton on the kitchen table. She inclines her head, ponytail slipping over her shoulder with the motion, and slowly plucks an octopus ball from the half-eaten pack. “Everyone is trying to ply me with food today,” she murmurs.

Zabuza raises a sly eyebrow, cranes his neck to watch her over the back of the couch. “What makes you think they’re for you?”

Her expression doesn’t change, but it’s a reaction he’s come to understand as playful when she slowly, without breaking eye contact, pops the treat into her mouth, the two prominent eye-teeth, like an animal’s fangs, visible for an instant before she snaps it down. It’s so clearly a challenge that she may as well have been smirking, and he considers vaulting over the couch to snatch them from her before reconsidering. Agile as they are, roughhousing in this cramped space may lead to broken appliances and footprints on the ceiling. Besides, it would hardly be rewarding to take something from someone who looks ready to keel over at any second, so he waves her over with a stiff motion of his head. “Fine,” he concedes, turning back to the pages he’d marked on pressure points, “have some. Just bring them over here.”

He looks back after a moment to find she’s paused a few steps from the kitchen, distracted in passing and now studying the Head-Cleaver very carefully, leaned in close.

“You…” he gives an indifferent shrug, “you can try it, if you’d like.”

“No,” she steps away from it immediately, shaking her head as she hurries away to sit beside him. “No. No I couldn’t. It’s yours,” she insists as she eases the textbook from his hands and sets it down in her lap, the takeout food between them. “It… It suits you,” she adds, nodding her certainty when she looks up a moment later and meets his eye.

  
Zabuza lets a thoughtful little humming sound from his throat. He isn’t sure how to respond to that, suddenly very conscious of her gaze on the exposed half of his face. Eating presents itself as a suitable exemption to a reply, and he nudges the cloth strips apart just enough to eat one of the cold takoyaki.

“Oh,” she exclaims softly, “your **_teeth_**.” Her eyes widen in surprise for a moment and she leans closer to inspect the newly filed points, immediately backing away, mumbling an apology, when he recoils.

The taste of iron overpowers the octopus, and batter, and sauce, and he inadvertently cuts himself again as he runs his tongue over the unfamiliar rows of razor sharp edges. She’s watching him carefully, still worried over startling him. He lets a dry chuckle through the cloth as he tucks them safely back into place, though he knows she can still tell when he smirks beneath them. “Yeah, yeah, yours are natural. Go ahead, rub it in.” It seems to do the trick because her posture relaxes, her single puff of exhaled air almost like a laugh. Her eyebrows dip though as something occurs to her.

“You’re going to cover them?”

They’re a symbol of his position, meant to be displayed, to intimidate, but just the thought of removing the bandages leaves him feeling naked. “I think the Executioner’s Blade speaks for itself,” he says finally, and she nods in a way that makes him wonder if she doesn’t understand more than he said aloud.

They spend the night going over the textbook in excruciating detail, pleased to find that it’s all familiar. The training dummies they ‘kill’ in class hardly stand a chance against their training. Senbon are useful weapons to anyone who wants to be considered for ANBU, particularly the hunter division. While they’re fiddly and require immaculate precision to be lethal, the minimal damage to the body can provide vital clues concerning the target’s recent whereabouts to the hunters, just as the corpse could provide information about their village to an enemy. Though the same level of accuracy isn’t needed with a kunai (and kubikiri hocho requires very little accuracy at all) it’s useful information just the same.

All the while something nags at him. “Kotone?” he says suddenly, and thinks better of the remark a moment too late.

“Hm?”

“Never mind,” Zabuza answers, scowling as he shakes his head, and firmly ignores the way she fumbles, her still-trembling fingers struggling to turn the page.

 

 

 


	12. Chapter 12

To most, the hallway would be a quiet one this early in the morning, but as he passes each apartment, the Swordsman’s well-honed ears catch signs of life within. A couple is giggling playfully inside the nearest room, and across the hall a toddler is babbling unhappily in the first quiet, escalating complaints that lead in to a full-blown tantrum. The apartment he’s looking for is silent but for the muffled rush of water he can hear through the door. He knocks, and the sounds of bare feet padding against the floorboards are nearly inaudible, even to him.

The girl doesn’t seem surprised to see him when she answers, likely having already deduced his identity. No approaching footsteps, so a ninja. Hatsuka had helped himself to their spare key years ago, so he just lets himself in, often (but with leftovers from his massive family’s massive family meals, so they let him).

“Good morning Zakuro-sensei,”   Kotone says, polite despite the yawn she’s stifling. “Zabuza just got in the shower. I’ll let him know you’re here.” She turns and starts towards the bathroom, and he stops her with a hand on her shoulder.

“Actually, I’m here to see you.”

“Me?” The look of quiet shock on her face triggers a new twinge of guilt in his chest, and he’s even more certain that this is necessary.

“Mhm,” he nods, cheerfully, gesturing down the hallway with a bob of his head, “come on. Don’t have all day,” and she dashes back to stuff a bowl of whatever her now-abandoned breakfast had been back into the fridge before pulling on her sandals and trailing after him. He barely has to look down anymore to meet her eye level, her long strides easily keeping pace with his. Zakuro’s expert eyes catch the stiffness in her movements as she hurries down the stairs, and the bruises surfacing in all of her own favourite targets, indicative of an extended fight with one of her own water clones. Her hands are steady, but there are dark circles under her eyes. Both boys have noted how difficult it can be to wake her, and he’s fairly certain he knows why. If he’s right, it’s fairly obvious what she had been doing the night before.

It should only take an afternoon, and if they’d bothered training **_Ameyuri_** , he hardly has an excuse to deny Kotone on those grounds.

She follows beside him silently, but a glance down finds her carefully watching his expression. Studying. Waiting for any hint or sign of his intentions. It’s not until he leads her to the Mizukage’s building and down the staircase that her expression changes, as they climb down to the rarely used lower levels: down past the pool used for indoor training exercises, past the archives and recordkeeping. It’s only after she peers down over the railing, at the final floor, ninth below ground, that houses Fuguki’s lair, and he calls her away from it, that she speaks up. “Zakuro-Sensei, where are we going?”

“It’s been suggested to me,” he says, pushing past the heavy door to the desired floor, the secured storage vault, “that I’ve been neglecting you, somewhat.” She immediately shakes her head, about to disagree when he cuts her off with held out hand. “Hatsuka has Ekirei to worry about, and his responsibilities as the head of his family. Zabuza’s learning to use the Head-Cleaver. Only fair that you get something to play with, too. To qualify for the right to apply to ANBU, you have to completely dispose of… was it a pig carcass last year? Have you given any thought to how you’re going to do that?” Hatsuka has his swarm of brown rats, and after much frustration and gritting of teeth, Zabuza had finally managed just enough of a Fire-style jutsu to destroy a corpse. It didn’t come naturally enough to be useful in a fight, but he wasn’t surprised the boy had a little fire in him. Kotone had no such luck thus far, her attempts at any second nature transformation all failures, nothing inside of her but still water. She shakes her head with a troubled look in her eye.

There’s a guard stationed by heavily-warded doors, and it takes him a moment to recognize Zakuro. Apparently starved for any opportunity to exert his tiny sliver of authority, he immediately stands to block their passage, ranting about proper procedure and security clearance, trailing off with a horrified widening of his eyes, and hastily ushering Zakuro through. Either way, Zakuro had done everything above board, and has a lovely requisition form, signed by Yagura himself, all nicely set up and labeled with the appropriate item number, as properly as if Kotone had done it herself. The guard barely looks at it.

The door is keyed to the guards’ chakra, and swings open easily with a touch of his hand. The room is cramped, too-brightly lit for its size; inside are bookshelves stacked with rows upon rows of thin scrolls, organized in some bizarre, deliberately complicated system, but he already has the code he needs and is soon able to follow the different levels of the numbering system to the right section, shelf, and finally individual article. Kotone’s slowly prowling through the aisles, carefully inspecting the stored wares, sometimes gently nudging a scroll to reveal its tag, but never moving anything. She reminds him of a curious kitten investigating a new toy, batting at it with sheathed claws.

He can’t remember the last time he’d looked at her and seen anything but another Kabu.

He unseals the scroll, retrieving the long-forgotten treasure hidden away inside. Kotone peeks over his shoulder at the much larger scroll, leaning in closer to try and read the exterior. “What is it?”

Zakuro grins. “The spoils of war,” he says, holding it out for her to see more easily. “It’s a summoning contract. Belonged to a family of Hidden-cloud ninja, the Shima Clan. The last one died in the Second Great War, and they took this off his body. It’s been here so long, I doubt anyone remembers we even have it.” Sealing the whole thing up again, she follows him through the door. He offers it to the guard on the way out to compare against his requisition, and then they’re on their way again, up the stairs and out into the misty village streets.

“The summoning contract… What is it?”

She’s slowly growing bolder, more willing to speak without being spoken to. He should probably be ashamed that his student is so uncomfortable with him after so many years, resorting to the same cold, cautious professionalism she’d adopt for any other superior officer. He’s starting to see something through it, though, a kind of hopeful disbelief that he’s acknowledging her, let alone giving her something. Which, of course, makes him feel even worse. “It’s a surprise,” he says, grinning. “But I think you’re going to like them.”

She seems puzzled when he steers away from their normal training grounds and keeps going north through the narrowing streets. “I thought I’d let our resident expert teach you the summoning jutsu.”

Hatsuka had been thrilled when he’d stopped by to share his plan late the night before, and is eagerly waiting outside when they arrive at the Nezumi estate. They spend the day on the Nezumis’ front lawn, under the watchful gaze of their teacher and intermittently, various members of Hatsuka’s family as they wander out to watch, grow bored, and retreat back inside. Momonga, however, stays for long stretches at a time, sometimes chiming in with advice of her own as her sleek, red-eyed, white rats lounge on her shoulders and paw affectionately at her hair.

Hatsuka has her sign it in blood from her right hand, ‘Ume’ stark against an unbroken line of Shima after Shima, shows her the handseals, and she throws down attempts after attempt until her chakra reserves are all but depleted. It’s not an easy jutsu by any means, but for a jonin she’s taking an unusually long time to master the technique. Hatsuka’s beginning to frown slightly as he watches, eventually stopping her to insist they take a break to eat.

He invites them inside for leftover imoni, eating slowly and trying to engage Kotone in conversation between each spoonful. Zakuro also can’t help but notice that when he finally has to stop drawing out his bowl of soup, he’s suddenly very intent on showing her things his cousins and youngest brother have drawn, and of course she has to hear about Momonga’s latest exploits as a chunin on the cusp of a promotion.

Momonga and her brother exchange a look. “You know what?” he says suddenly, “Let’s head back outside before it gets any darker. Give it one last try.” Kotone excuses herself and returns to the yard, the two Nezumi siblings hanging behind with Zakuro.

“Why the stalling?”

“She felt…” Hatsuka inclined his head, swaying with an uncertain sound that usually means he’s trying to communicate a sense the listener doesn’t have.

“Wobbly,” Momonga offers helpfully, and Hatsuka snaps his fingers in instant agreement.

“ ** _Wobbly_**. She’s better now.”

When they step outside, Kotone is kneeling in the grass, staring intently at the mass of thick grey fur, and spots, and teeth that’s crawled into her lap and is swiping at the loose fabric of her sleeve with massive claws. She and the baby snow leopard seem to be conversing, though its side is nothing but breathy grunts and mews.

“ ** _Holy shit_** ,” Hatsuka’s gleeful surprise drops his jaw.

His sister’s reaction is more subdued, but none the less very pleased. “ **Much** better,” she appraises, as her rats all retreat to the safety of her pockets.

“His name is Menou,” she tells them when the cub is dismissed in a puff of smoke. “He’s just a baby, but I’ll be able to call on stronger cats as I improve. Thank you, Zakuro-sensei. Thank you so much.” It’s the closest Zakuro’s ever seen her come to really smiling.  

The stars are already out, only the brightest few visible through the thick layer of clouds, by the time he’s able to sneak away from the village that night, and make his way deep into the mountains, where his favourite student is waiting, definitely impatient and almost certainly furious.

 

/ / / /

Kotone rushes back to the apartment, eager to share the day’s developments, but Zabuza is nowhere to be found. She settles herself on the couch and waits for him, and despite her exhaustion, there’s a jittery energy running through her veins that a cup of tea does nothing to calm, glancing towards the door at any signs of movement in the hallway— which is ridiculous, because if it were Zabuza, there would be no sound until his key in the door.

She finally gives up and goes to bed, waking to find he hasn’t returned. She would have to check with the assignments office to be certain, but in all likelihood he’d been called away on an mission very suddenly, either as a replacement for a dead or injured party, or more likely as of late, a solo mission. Cloaked in mist he was deadly and undetectable, but still she was still always troubled when he was sent out alone. Kotone kept her concerns to herself, of course. She could just imagine how offended he would be if he knew she worried for him.

She heads out into the chilled, foggy morning, through the village gates and deep into the woods where she would be alone with her work, and had little chance of alarming any passing civilians. Menou was wonderful and, once he matured, would make a fantastic asset in terms of reconnaissance and covertly relaying messages, especially through the snow. But for her purposes, something much larger would be necessary, so she sets again to gathering her chakra and slamming her bloodied palm to the snowy ground.

She calls him again without meaning to. Perhaps, with him here, it would be easier to call something else, so she leaves him to amuse himself in the sticky wet snow still left on the ground in great clumps.

She’s been having difficulty focusing lately, a buzzing in her head that steadily grows into a pounding ache as the day wears on. Finally, she feels everything fall into place even before the puff of smoke announces her success.

There’s a crunching shift of ice crystals as Menou recovers from an intentional tumble down in pile of snow, ears perking up at the sight of the larger cat that had materialized in the clearing. “Hisui-nee-san!” he exclaims happily in a voice only Kotone can understand, bounding on fluffy snowshoe feet towards the new arrival.

The leopard acknowledges him briefly as he nuzzles against her, jade green eyes studying Kotone intently. She’s glossy jet-black save the subtle rosette patterns that Kotone can only just make out as she carefully pads closer, never failing to meet her piercing gaze. Hatsuka had stressed how vital it was to have a summoned creature’s respect. The rats had served his family for generations, so goodwill had comes easily. For her, it would be far more precarious to walk the tightrope between showing weakness and submission, and offending them by being to bold. Menou had already known her by the smell of her blood on the contract, so she isn’t surprised when the larger cat greets her by name.

“Kotone-san,” the leopard says finally, with a graceful nod of her head. Her voice is like the velvet of her fur. “My name is Hisui. What would you have me do?”

Kotone returns the gesture, doing her best to appear gracious. “Nothing at the moment, Hisui. I’d like you to stay here, for a while. I believe it would make it easier for me to summon another of your companions.” Hisui slowly stalks out of the way, plucking Menou off the ground by the scruff of his neck. She busies herself bathing the squirming cub with her great rough tongue as Kotone continues                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           her work.

She’s struggling to keep her breath even when she finally feels something else answer her call, sweat sticking her uwagi to her skin despite the chill in the air. With this even larger summon especially, she sees the need to reign in the outwards signs of her exhaustion, immediately taking in the massive, sandy-gold animal’s critical gaze as she scrutinizes her new mistress. “You called?” her voice is rougher than Hisui’s, notes of a growl present even in casual speech. From the sidelines, Hisui is watching with interest, and while Menou mewls brightly at the other creature’s arrival, he doesn’t go rushing over.

“This is Kogane, Kotone-san,” Hisui informs her when the lioness fails to introduce herself.

“Kogane, Hisui, I’m pleased to have made your acquaintance today. Menou, it’s good to see you again. You’re all dismissed for now.”

They take their leave, one by one; Kogane vanishing immediately, Hisui after another slight bow, and Menou bounding away with into a wisp of smoke after an enthused “Bye, Koto-chan!” in his childlike voice.

Finally free of their evaluations, she lets out a deep sigh and tips backwards into the snow. She lies there, studying the thick ceiling of grey clouds overhead, as the cold eases her overheated body and the sweat on her skin cools until she shivers. The throbbing in her temples had gradually spread to an ache behind her eyes, and she’s grateful for the darkening sky.

Over the next week, she trains until she has just the right balance of chakra to call Hisui and Kogane, individually and at once. Kotone keeps them with her as much as possible to better understand them, and for them to familiarize themselves with her. Her approach secured, she marches down to the village morgue to retrieve the pig carcass allotted to her, and drags it to the appropriate classroom to get the instructor she knows will be present during this timeslot to witness the assignment for her.

Kogane and Hisui fall upon the meat immediately, making quick work of the flesh and organs. Her instructor’s approving nods, however, slow, as time passes and her subordinates are still gorging themselves, cracking bone to suck down the marrow. Creatures like Hisui and Kogane are hardly ordinary animals, more powerful than any normal wild cats one find in the wilderness, and the immense, unnatural strength of their jaws allow them to devour the skeleton itself.

“Hmm,” the instructor turns to mull over the elapsed minutes. “Usually we expect it to be done faster, but fine. I’ll accept it.”

She thanks him, holding off on the relieved sigh welling up in her chest until he’s strode from the room and she’s sure he’s out of earshot. Kogane is prowling the room, sniffing for any missed scraps, while Hisui sits patiently before her, tail swishing as she licks the gore from her muzzle. “Thank you, both. I promise the next time I need this done, it will be fresher, and still warm. I can hardly ask you to eat faster,” she muses, carefully studying the clock. Passable, but only just—it’s worrying, but ANBU rarely operate alone. There would likely always be someone else to hurry things along, but still… “I suppose there isn’t anyone bigger I could summon.”

Her cats exchange a wary look, but say nothing.

 

/ / / /

Kotone comes home the next evening clutching a paper bag stuffed with groceries, and another bag hanging off of her arm. It’s just as she’s stepping from the stairwell onto their floor that she hears a door slam shut, and finds a rather stunned Zabuza paused just outside their apartment, every muscle taught and primed to spring away at the slightest provocation.

The only movement is a flicker of his wide eyes towards her as she approaches. “Either you’ve gotten very good at genjutsu in a very short time,” he says steadily, sucking a slow breath through bandages and sharpened teeth, “or there is a **_lion_** on our couch.” It’s been happening less as it settles into it’s new gravelly pitch, but his voice cracks a little.

Frightened would be an overstatement, but Zabuza isn’t as immune to being **_flustered_** as he’d like to think, and not as good at hiding it, either— at least, not from her—but watching him try is far more entertaining than it should be. “There should be a panther in there too, somewhere.” It seems like an appropriate moment to smile. “I’ve had a very interesting week.”

Despite her assurances, he’s still on high-alert as they step inside. His initial attempt to enter the apartment had drawn Hisui from Kotone’s bedroom, and she’s peeking out into the main living space from the doorway. As she loads the eggs and milk into the fridge, Kotone makes a point of very deliberately letting them both know that he lives here, and is not to be harmed. Kogane makes a huffing sound close to a derisive chuckle, but she languidly pours herself from his seat on the couch before dismissing herself altogether, Hisui disappearing after, with Kotone’s permission.

“I don’t need protection from your pets,” he grumbles when they’re gone, and Kotone shrugs in reply.

“I’d rather avoid that confrontation altogether. To keep my cats safely capitated, of course.”

His eyes narrow but she can see the little grin hidden by his bandages. “Don’t need you patronizing me, either.”

She explains the week’s relevant happenings as she sets to putting the groceries away, Zabuza silently digging past the vegetables in the bag (with a disdainful grimace) and collecting the cans at the bottom.

When she pulls away from the fridge she finds him carefully inspecting the contents of the unmarked bag, an eyebrow raised as he looks over to her. Kotone kicks the fridge shut with a sigh as she crosses the kitchen to ease the second-hand Kimono from his hands. It’s a faded red-purple, not really suited to the coming spring, and meant for a much older woman, but it was the only one she could afford that fit her.

“That’s the other thing…”

/ / / /

Zabuza snaps the grilled strip of fish from the thin bamboo skewer more aggressively than necessary, and a passing civilian girl’s eyes go wide at the sight of his monstrous teeth. Hatsuka nudges him as she scurries away, with a chastising click of his tongue.

“This is supposed to be fun, man, stop terrorizing the villagers,” he says, rifling through the sleeve of his slate-grey yukata for coins as he eyes the rest of the stalls.

“I’m only here for the food,” he insists, taking another bite. He still can’t believe he agreed to come at all. Kirigakure itself never did much in the way of festivals, even the New Year being largely marked at home with little public revelry. Around the country, though, smaller villages tended to put on real festivals at one time or another, Setsubun being the major event in this particular little port town. It sits just north of Kirigakure, little over an hour’s walk through the mountains. The whole village is built on a precarious slope, buildings and step-dotted streets climbing up the mountainside, a sliver of rocky beach separating it from the ocean. It’s along this beach that the stalls are lined up, children wearing their demon masks darting between them and gleefully flinging roasted beans at each other.

It’s always a cold day when they welcome the technical start of spring, ice still bobbing in the waves and slush piled around the stalls where paths have been cleared. It will be a long while before spring comes in earnest, but the villagers are used to the miserable February weather, and the beach is packed, long lines winding before each stall but one, conspicuously deserted and visible from a distance as they reach the festival grounds.

“Who the hell sets up a kakigori stand in February?” says Hatsuka. “The poor bastard.”

“I think they’re just covering all of their bases,” Kotone replies, glancing back over her shoulder. “Most villages can only afford one festival in a year, now, if they can at all.”

Unseasonable activities aside, their teacher, at least, is wholeheartedly embroiled in the more traditional festivities. “Demons out; luck in!” Zakuro chants, bouncing soybeans off the back of Zabuza’s head. The boy turns to give him a withering look, but it only encourages the older jonin. “That’s the only reason you wanted me to come here, isn’t it?”

“Is it so wrong of me to want one last outing as a team before I lose you to the ranks of the Black ops division? Well, I’ll be missing those two, at least,” he says grinning. “You, I get to antagonize for the rest of your training.” He lobs another bean and Zabuza swats it away, scowling. “Lighten up, this is supposed to be fun. Look how much fun we’re having.” He gestures to Hatsuka as he disappears into the crowd at a jog, straight towards a goldfish pond game.

Kotone’s just ahead, dutifully munching on her soybeans and beaming as she takes in the sights, approaching each item of interest to inspect it carefully and closely. She drifts back over when she notices Zakuro gesturing to her, and those soybeans must have hit him harder than he would have thought possible, because Zakuro actually seems to **_smile_** at her for a moment. Kotone realizes by the time she gets there that she wasn’t actually being called, and instead, she falls into step beside him, nudging at him with a closed hand. “Here,” she says, offering him a handful of the beans, and he has no doubt that if he were to count them, it would be a carefully picked fourteen and one more. “They’re lucky.”

“They’re **_disgusting_** ,” he retorts, but accepts them anyway. He doesn’t believe in any of this superstitious garbage, but she does, and she watches, nodding approvingly, as he knocks them back all at once and supresses a shudder of revulsion. “There. Happy?” She nods again, looking altogether too pleased with herself.

The plum kimono, dusted with a regular pattern of pale flowers, smooths over all the harsh lines of her powerful frame, makes her height a bit less imposing. Smiling like this, she blends in perfectly, all her mannerisms cautious and falsely shy, closed in on herself to take up the least possible space. She’s trying not to alarm the locals, and to the untrained eye, she would be the perfect image of a normal civilian girl if not for the surly shinobi boy in her company who had refused to change out of his fatigues and flak jacket.

It would be unnerving, seeing her like this, like watching an imposter wandering around in her skin, but Zabuza knows her well enough to glimpse traces of the soldier lurking beneath. She’s surreptitiously studying the crowd, observing, breaking them down into pieces she can take for herself to improve the illusion, to draw from as she needs them. Zakuro had invited them out, for once, with no ulterior motive, but she’s treating it as a recon mission.

“Do you like it?”

He starts awkwardly, realizing she’s caught him examining her kimono for longer than he should have, and she seems genuinely puzzled by the interest.

“Because I… I think **_I_** like it,” she muses, adjusting the obi. “I know I look stupid, and I mean, it’s too heavy to be practical in a fight, but something lighter… you could hide a lot in one of these…” she pats at the tamoto approvingly.

A flock of young teenagers loiters around a set of public benches, giggling and whispering to each other, sizing up the unfamiliar visitors to their village.

Kotone’s actually made an effort to look like a girl tonight, and he watches as one of the boys in the little huddle leans away to appreciate the result. While Kotone is focused on him beside her, the other boy’s eyes trail up and down her body, appraising, before nudging his friend and drawing his attention to her with an awkward motion of his head. Zabuza supresses the irritated growl rising in his throat as he levels a glare at them, not noticing how he’s drawn closer to Kotone until their shoulders just brush. The boys finally detect him lurking beside her and prudently retreat, stumbling over each other in their haste to put the rest of their friends between Zabuza and themselves.

There’s a stifled squawk of laughter behind him and he doesn’t have to turn to know it’s Zakuro. Zabuza squares his shoulders and resolves to ignore him. It’s more difficult to dismiss the reproachful look Kotone’s giving him as she watches them scurry away.

“Zabuza, they’re civilian children; don’t frighten them.” They’re likely older than she is, but he supposes they’d be children too if the Hidden Mist hadn’t claimed them. Nothing with a hitai-ate and a taste for blood can ever be called a child again.

He can’t look at her as he grumbles some vague non-apology, can’t answer the perplexed look she’s giving him with any sensible explanation. Mercifully, Hatsuka comes bustling back a moment later, cautiously squeezing himself, and the bunches of bagged goldfish in his hands, between the bodies in the crowd. He holds them up triumphantly, a grin spreading across a face quickly losing the baby fat roundness of childhood. He looks more like Risu every year, but despite the similar gaunt features and wiry frame, there’s a softness in Hatsuka’s eyes that sets him apart. “Momo and the kids are going **_flip_** when they see these.”

The water droplets clinging to the plastic bags have already frozen into beads, the kiri ninja’s breath crystalizing in the chilled air. Zakuro quickly urges him to store them somewhere warmer. Most of the bags fit down the front of Hatsuka’s warm clothing, but Kotone’s able to fit one bag into the tamoto of her kimono, holding it close and wrapping it as best she can in the other sleeve as they start for home. Hatsuka hangs back as Kotone’s much longer, purposeful strides take her to the front of the group. Zakuro’s more leisurely pace has him bringing up the rear, and Hatsuka settles between them. He watches Zabuza for a moment, eyebrows raised, before it becomes clear to the other boy that he isn’t about to acknowledge the gesture. “Everything alright? I was picking up this flash of something like **_killing intent_** from over here.”

“And what makes you think it was me?”

“When has it ** _not_** been you?”

The more stubbornly he refuses to answer, the more hilarious Zakuro finds it and he’s still chuckling to himself when the four ninja (and few surviving goldfish) make it back to the village, just in time to steal a few precious hours of sleep before the next morning’s trial.

/ / / /

 

That morning, eighteen ANBU operatives, one for each black ops hopeful deemed worthy of consideration, had started out from the center of the village in each direction. After an hour’s head start, they were to pursue, subdue, and retrieve their target by noon to be admitted to the next round of testing. As far as Zabuza was concerned, the most challenging part was **_not_** killing them, and the ANBU volunteer slumped in the classroom seat beside him is only just starting to regain consciousness. At his other side, Kotone is helping her own battered victim ice the back of his head. He groans occasionally, between curses muttered under his breath, and it’s impossible to be sure, behind the narrow eyes of his now-cracked mask, but Zabuza’s fairly certain he’s glaring at her. If she can tell, she doesn’t seem to mind.

He keeps glancing at the clock over the door, fingers drumming impatiently against the tabletop. While she doesn’t voice her concerns, Kotone keeps quietly asking him for the time, and she grows increasingly restless as the minutes pass with no sign of Hatsuka.

It’s five minutes before the deadline when they finally hear dragging footsteps down the hallway and he appears, hauling a much larger ninja along beside him, supporting his target’s slumping form as he shuffles along beside him towards the nearest seat and collapses against the desk the moment Hatsuka slips his arm out from beneath the other’s shoulders.

A smirk pulls at the bandages over his face as their last teammate hurries over to them between the rows of desks. “Took you long enough.”

“I didn’t want to **_hurt_** him,” Hatsuka protests indignantly, arms crossed over his narrow chest. “He’s one of ours.”

“What did you do?” Kotone inquires, attention fixed on Hatsuka’s volunteer, as she rises and takes a few steps closer for a better look.

“My family’s best known for Ekirei’s poison, and the antidote, but we’re good with all kinds of stuff,” he shrugs, pulling a unfamiliar smoke bomb from his sleeve and rolling it deftly between his bony fingers. “Even with a sedative you have to be careful though, so I made it up pretty weak, just enough to get him back here. He’ll be a bit groggy for a while, but he’ll be fine.”

The room is filled with the applicants and their criminal-stand-ins, the examiner testing them, and one other strange man in standard teal and brown ANBU gear, loitering against the back wall.

The assembled ninja all immediately snap back into focus as the classroom door slams shut and locks itself noisily, the three who had failed to return officially disqualified. From there, the proctor moves purposefully across the room to the storage closet, emerging with two marked training dummies and lining them up in the center of the room. A second trip brings out a third, a Kirigakure flak jacket hanging ridiculously from its soft shoulders, stuffed arms hanging awkwardly over the reinforced material of the sides.

He walks a line scratched into the tile of the floor, on the far side of the room from the targets. “No farther than this. This one you need alive,” he informs them brusquely, indicating the first dummy. “Kill these two.”

Zabuza is called first, noting with deep satisfaction the cautious note in the examiner’s voice, way the other students shrink away, warily as he passes.

He draws the senbon from the holster at his thigh, and in a flash it’s over. It’s not how he would choose to deal with his own quarry, and in the assassination division he’ll have more freedom than he does in this test— but darting along the row, making the necessary calculations and considerations, comes effortlessly after such thorough training. The first needs to be immobilized, well-placed needles to the muscles of the legs rendering them helpless. The second is simple, a single well aimed strike to the heart would kill them instantly. It’s the third that’s the trick— if anyone tries to deal with it as easily as the last, they’ll be sure to fail. Even if they find a vulnerable spot in the jacket, at a seam or closure, it won’t penetrate far enough to kill. It’s a difficult shot around the high collar of the jacket— for specifically this reason— but he hits the right fatal points in the neck.

“Not bad, not bad,” Hatsuka assesses, falsely unimpressed and trying to supress a grin when Zabuza strides confidently back to his teammates.

“That was perfect and you know it.”

“Eh. I’ll give it a solid seven.”

When his turn comes, Hatsuka is equally flawless, and he saunters back to them with a cheeky grin and a waggle of his eyebrows.

“Six-point-five.”

“Petty bastard. You’re just a sore loser. Come on, Kotone— neutral third party,” he nudges her shoulder affectionately. “Who was better?”

“I… don’t know,” she admits, not taking her eyes off the test. “It looked the same to me.”

“ _She’s just sparing your feelings_ ,” he stage whispers towards Zabuza, with a wink, and a moment of confusion when Zabuza holds up a hand for him to pause instead of replying in kind. Hatsuka had missed the examiner’s last announcement, and Kotone takes her place at the mark. He’s seen her do this a thousand times, the training dummies set up around their preferred training ground no match for her speed or her knowledge of each little hidden place around a human body to kill, or deaden, or hurt, that rivals his own.

She takes a breath, readies the needles in her hands, and proceeds to miss every last target.

If there’s one thing that has always elicited a visible reaction from Kotone, it’s failure of any kind, but there’s no change in her expression, nothing indicating that she’s aware of the problem. She’s just carefully waiting for some kind of acknowledgement from the examiner, whose mouth is drawn into a thin line as he gives her a withering stare she finds confusing. It isn’t until some of the waiting recruits behind him begin to snicker and whisper amongst themselves that her brows dip and she actually creeps forward to inspect her work, eyes widening when draws closer. Her choices were perfect, and it’s clear what she was aiming for, but she’s off by enough to make the difference between killing a target needed alive, and having no effect at all.

“I’ve seen enough,” the examiner levels a scornful glare at her over his clipboard. “You’re dismissed. Get out.”

Zabuza makes a mental note of the ones who laugh as she excuses herself and quickly crosses the room, posture rigid and hands tightened into fists at her sides. His jaw clenches as he studies their voices, their build, things he’ll be able to recognize behind a mask. He’ll be working alongside them now, and undoubtedly commanding them soon after— best to remember which among them think it’s funny to watch a member of the unit fail, which among them will be out on their worthless asses the moment he has the power to do so. Bad for cohesion.

In her position, Zabuza is certain he wouldn’t be able to resist slamming the door, but Kotone is nothing if not well behaved. It closes with a soft click as she disappears down the hallway.

“ _What the hell was that?_ ” Hatsuka hisses the moment she’s gone. At his side, the smaller boy is agitated, nervously glancing towards the door as though he means to follow after, but causing a disruption now, especially in such a flagrant display of soft-heartedness, will surely find him dismissed, himself. His family would be disgraced, and Kotone would be horrified rather than touched, so he reluctantly stays put as the testing resumes.

Zabuza says nothing, but he’s certain he knows what went wrong. There are countless, innocuous, little instances coming back to him, that together form a pattern he should have put together.

Another two applicants shamed from the room before the exam is over, a final count of twelve newly appointed ANBU operatives are awarded the coveted mask of an elite, as well as their assignments. They’re given their pick of the standard designs, several repeating patterns to grant perfect anonymity and hide their numbers— he recognizes Kushimaru’s face among them, as the examiner lists off which teams have requested each new recruit upon their promotion. Hatsuka grabs a mask with dark blue curving beneath the eyes as he’s assigned to the oinin division.

Zabuza is one of the few accepted by the assassination division. He makes no move to take one of the eerie, dead-eyed, masks, and the examiner doesn’t push the issue. He’ll be carrying the Head Cleaver into battle— anonymity will not be an option, and if he can’t be no one, best to make a name for himself as soon as possible.

Unclaimed masks sit abandoned on the examiner’s desk as they leave, among them the design he knows Kotone had been considering—blood red swirls, stark enough for even her to see them.

 

/ / / /

“I don’t understand, though. She did so well in practice.”

“Muscle memory. We’ve been using those targets for years; she would know instinctively how to hit any spot on any one of them.”

Familiar, hushed voices drift down down the stairwell.

They find her sitting beneath the stairs, knees hugged tight to her chest. Not hiding, of course, just keeping out of the way of foot traffic, contemplating her failure. She feels heavy, and exhausted, the memory of the cold feeling like a uncontrolled fall that had come over her in that moment reverberating through the constant roar of nothing inside of her. How had she not noticed? It must have happened so gradually… She’d never had this problem as a child, taking notes easily from the back row of any classroom.

It takes her a moment to pull herself from her thoughts enough to greet Hatsuka as he slowly approaches to crouch beside her, Zabuza hanging back, watching them, arms folded. He doesn’t look frustrated with her as she’d expected he might, and that’s a relief and a worry at once, because now she isn’t sure what to make of him, how to interpret that expression. She’s never had this much difficulty reading anyone else. Only him, always him.

Hatsuka is an open book, his face softened by sympathy but he’s trying to keep it from his voice. He’s concerned for her, but trying to avoid offending her with outright pity. It’s a familiar tactic that he seems to find necessary. Case in point, the polished white mask just peeking from his hapi, like he’s trying to hide it from her. “You passed. I knew you would. Congratulations,” she offers, smiling. Because one smiles when they’re pleased, and she wanted them to do well, so it’s an appropriate time.

“Yeah,” he replies, the smile he gives in return more of a nervous twitch. “Yeah, thanks. How are you doing?”

It’s a common phrase with an accepted response; she knows the answer to this one. “I’m fine, thank you. How are you?”

He frowns at her in that uneasy way he has. “That isn’t what I meant. Come on,” he says, offering a hand and helping her to her feet. The smile he quirks at her is genuine. “Are we taking you shopping for glasses, or what?”

“ ** _No_**.” It slips out, urgently, and Hatsuka blinks at her in surprise. She shakes her head, feeling her teeth grind together at the thought as she tries not to imagine the feel of twisted wire biting in to her skin, the way an eye collapses into a bloody void when unskilled, childish hands tug a shard of glass free. “What if…” she gestures the palm of her hand sharply towards her face, but he only looks more confused. “My father wore glasses,” is all she can think to add. “I think they killed him.”

 

He turns to Zabuza for an explanation, and she catches the subtle, dismissive, gesture he gives in return that she interprets as reassurance that he’ll explain later. She should probably be alarmed that discussing her while she isn’t present is a common enough occurrence to warrant hand signals, but really she’s relieved. She isn’t sure she could properly relate to Hatsuka why it had felt to important at the time. The memory’s grown hazy, but she remembers her five-year-old brain’s certainty that she needed the pieces. He had needed them back; they had been a part of his face. More than his eyes had been. He’d been so tall, and had rarely looked down at her; all she could remember was the glare of light off the lenses. She doesn’t remember his eyes, just knows as a fact that they had been like her own.

“It wouldn’t matter anyway,” Zabuza says, the rough, gravelly, and very adult voice that’s so different from that of the boy she had met that day, calling her back to the present. “Needing corrective lenses at all disqualifies you from the assassinations unit **_and_** the hunter corps, immediately.”

“They’re talking about changing that, though,” Hatsuka protests, placing steadying hand on her shoulder as they start from the stairwell towards the ground floor itself, and then the street. “I bet in a couple of years, they’ll relax that. It’s dumb, anyway. We’ll get you a big dumb pair of prescription goggles, with shatter-proof lenses, and you’ll look like the huge nerd I know you really are.”

Zabuza snickers, glancing back at them over his shoulder, eyebrows raised.

“Oh please, you’re as bad as she is. I know you quiz each other on bingo book stats. You’re both **_huge nerds_**.” He gives Zabuza a playful shove, and the other nearly sends toppling over in return. Watching them, she finds she hasn’t noticed the sinking feeling, that had been so constant before, in a long while. It all seems… manageable, somehow. True, they’ll go off to the covert ops teams without her, as is their right as excellent shinobi. It’s good for the village, and that’s all that really matters. She still gets to serve as a jonin, as she has before, but with the benefit of the extensive skill acquired from the ANBU training.

“Know what we should do?” Grinning, Hatsuka slips an arm each around their shoulders, straining to reach, as they step into the fresh air. Zabuza gives an annoyed little twinge, but tolerates it for a moment before shrugging him off. “Oden. Cart’s still just here. All three of us, come on, chow time. You too, you big grump.”

Something odd catches her eye. It’s clear to her now that she doesn’t see as well as most, but she still recognizes the man who had been watching the exam: his hair, his clothing, his posture. He’s following them, visible again and again out of the corner of her eye, watching. It’s as the oden stall is just visible that she catches him lingering in the mouth of dark alley, and he beckons to her before drawing back into the shadows.

“Go ahead without me,” she says, interrupting whatever banter she had tuned out when she had noticed their tail, as she slips from under Hatsuka’s arm. “I’ll be right back….”

“Should we wait, or…?”

“It’s probably a cat; leave her to it.”  

It’s a wide alleyway in the shadow of the Mizukage’s complex, piled with garbage, and what looks like a makeshift shelter constructed by a particularly industrious street urchin. The man is waiting for her, smiling smugly as she approaches. “Ume Kotone, was it?” she nods. “I watched you take the ANBU examination today. What a shame.” So that’s what it was about. The sinking feeling is coming back. “I’m familiar with your service record, though— quite accomplished, for someone so young. Excellent in hand-to-hand combat, a good intuition for human behaviour. Too bad that such a little thing renders all of that meaningless, eh?” It feels like a trick question, so she stays silent, watches him carefully. He smiles wider. “What if I told you that another black ops branch was hiring? One that didn’t advertise it’s vacancies as loudly as the other two. One that doesn’t care if you can hit such precise targets from a distance— as long as you can do it up close. To a still target, even. Doesn’t matter. Would you be interested in an offer like that?”

It sounds too good to be true, but he’s ANBU, a superior officer, and it isn’t her place to question his motives. Instead, she nods, quickly. “Yes. Yes, absolutely.”

Immediately, something blindsides her with the force of a charging bull, slamming her against the grimy brick wall of the adjacent building and leaving her crumpled in a heap. It’s more than the strength of the blow driving the air from her lungs that keeps her from getting up. She’s gasping for breath, yes, but there’s something deeper, like the strength is being bled from her. A crushing weight is digging into her back, something sharp and blunt, and **_hungry_** , she realizes, just as the world around her goes dark. It’s hungry for chakra.

She wakes somewhere cold, and dark, slumped on the floor, wrists bound behind her back. There’s paper tags plastered around the small room—warding against chakra usage, she’d imagine— but she feels so drained it hardly makes a difference. After puzzling out what had hit her, she’s not surprised to find Hoshigaki Kisame standing behind the man from the alley, only surprised that he’s involved in whatever this is at all. But she has a fairly good idea of where she is, and she knows who Kisame is apprenticed to. From what she’s learned about the weapon from Zakuro, that Samehada will let Kisame handle it at all is remarkable.

“Ah good, you’re awake. We can begin,” the stranger paces the room, drawing her attention to the table set up. All she can make of its contents is that they’re shiny, and likely metal. There’s a metal chair in the center of the room, and a deep basin of water in the corner. “You can call me Noboru, and I’m an interrogator. Obviously, we can’t trust important village secrets to just anyone. There’s a certain… standard. Certain requirements of an intelligence division operative. Certain **_tolerances_**. Now, don’t worry. If you choose to go ahead with your application, you can stop at any time. Just say the word, and we’ll stop, and you’ll be free to go. It just means you aren’t cut out for this line of work. Do you still want to continue?” He seems mildly surprised when she nods. He’s hoping to intimidate her, and seems irked when she’s less concerned with him than with studying Kisame for any indication of why he would be here.

“Ah,” Noboru scowls. “You see, one of the things that most interested us in you was your abilities in taijutsu. Field agents who can adequately defend themselves are a valuable asset. The chakra-supressing tags here won’t affect your physical stamina, and you’ll soon recover from the effects of having your chakra siphoned. As subjects tend to react violently to torture…”

“Intelligence agents tend to be weak, and fragile, is what he’s saying,” There’s a measured smirk in Kisame’s voice when he interjects, and though she can’t see it from her vantage point, she can imagine the sharp-toothed grin. “I’m here because he’s afraid you’ll hurt him.”  

“I wouldn’t,” she insists, “I understand why this is necessary.” There’s a chuckle from behind her. It isn’t unfriendly.

“You may feel differently when I’m holding your head underwater.”

Noboru drags her to her feet and hauls her over to the chair, growling in annoyance at being upstaged, his blunt teeth clenched visibly, a muscle working in his jaw. He leans in close enough for her to feel his breath against her face, close enough to make most people uncomfortable. All he’s done is make the little signs of frustration on his face clearer. “Are you ready?”

He’s looking for fear in her eyes, but he won’t find it. He won’t find anything. “When you are.”

/ / / /

It’s dark when she finally stumbles through the doorway.

Immediately he abandons the weapons he was sharpening with a clatter, rising from his seat on the couch to storm over. “Where the hell were you?” Zabuza snaps, stopping dead when he gets a look at her, and his exasperation melts into something darker as he crosses the space between them and instinctively starts to check her over. She’s soaking wet, water dripping from her hair and the hem of her clothes, an eye swollen shut, covered in deep cuts in non-lethal places and odd little round marks like a needle would leave. One of her hands is definitely broken, the other dripping blood.

“Sorry,” she rasps. “There was an interview process.”

“Interview for **_what?_** ”

Kotone lets out a long, contented breath, and raises her good hand to show him the thing clenched loosely in her fingers. Blood from what he can now see as two exposed nail beds has streaked across the familiar whirling pattern of the white mask.

“The intelligence division. I work for Suikazan Fuguki.”

She complains that she’s alright the whole way to the hospital, but he drags her there anyway.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had wanted to finish this on the 13th, because 12/13 is Kotone's birthday xD; but this is also retail hell season. I'm sorry this one took so long. I sincerely hope you enjoy reading it, and happy holidays!


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UPDATE: I can't believe I forgot to do this, but a heads-up that this is the chapter that a lot of the content warnings were for. Warning for Underage teenage character feeling obligated to engage in sexual acts and then being unable to process it afterwards, because you know, Kotone.

 

They keep missing each other.

He’s called away by a frantic ANBU colleague just as he’s finally persuaded her through the hospital doors, and he’s barely set foot back on Land of Water soil when another message arrives by gull and his unit turns right back towards the ferry.

Of course, his reputation had preceded him, but it had been as the boy who lost his mind and slaughtered an entire graduating year, or as the backup protégé of Zakuro Misao, but It isn’t long before his work speaks for itself. Soon enough it’s his seemingly-inhuman stealth and ability to cut through entire enemy units both swiftly and silently that has them calling him a Demon. He’s in high demand for increasingly vital and high-stakes missions that take him out of the country for longer stretches of time, and the spaces between are devoured by specialized training with whatever vaguely familiar ANBU unit they’ve assigned him to for the near future, and additional training with Zakuro.

His stops back at the apartment are quick and utilitarian: shower, food, pack, and always he finds the place empty. It’s more like having a haunting than a roommate, the only signs of her presence in the things she leaves— new containers of takeaway food abandoned in the fridge, shifted pillows and blankets, little things not where he left them. Once, even, he finds fresh condensation clinging to the bathroom mirror, the kettle on the stove still warm.

Hatsuka is much easier to find, and they cross paths in the stairwell leading to their divisions’ respective headquarters. The other boy gives an excited shout at the sight of him, bounding up the stairs to catch up and eagerly hounding him for any information he can share about his unit’s exploits and moping theatrically at the noncommittal replies.  He asks about Hatsuka’s latest mission in return, but Zabuza knows the answer already. Judging by the tentative way he’s holding it— away from himself, by the tips of his fingers like something toxic— the bag he’s carrying definitely contains a human head. His smile falters when he has to acknowledge the kill, and disappears altogether when the subject changes to their absent teammate.

“I haven’t seen much of her. She uh,” he gestures with his head towards the stairwell railing, and the empty chasm between the flight that spiral deeper, and deeper beneath street level, “spends most of her time down there, these days.”  

Zakuro’s response is a derisive scoff and a slow, disapproving shake of his head when Zabuza finally finds an opportunity to ask about her, (casually, of course, thoroughly disinterested) between sparring bouts.  “She’s sold her soul to the puffer fish. I try not to think about what goes on in his lair.”

He thinks of leaving a note for her the next time he’s home. It’s a stupid impulse, and once the pen is in his hand he can’t imagine what message it was he had been hoping to relay. Zabuza reconsiders at the first mark on the page, scrunching his face into a scowl as he scrunches the paper into a ball. Apparently, she had the same idea, because the only thing in the trash bin is a similar sheet of paper. Upon closer examination, however, there’s nothing written, just the beginning of some unintelligible scribble— that, if he squints at it just right, may have been a clumsy attempt at the first character of his name— in what definitely isn’t Kotone’s tidy hand.

As the three-month mark approaches, it suddenly occurs to him that this is the longest they’ve been apart since they met. It’s unfamiliar, all this time and space to himself, no one prying into his business or attempting awkward small talk, or just quietly observing him as he goes about his day. It should be a relief. Instead, it’s just a persistent awareness of something missing.

He finds work is the best distraction to quiet the nagging feeling, and his next moment alone finds him on the couch scowling and muttering furiously at the textbook in his lap and the needles caught between the pages as he contorts again to try sticking the stupid pin just right into his still-functional arm.

“Um,”

He stops dead at the soft sound, the familiar voice, and there she is in the doorway when he looks over, dark hair falling over the red-swirled ANBU mask as she inclines her head to study him. A hand carefully lifts the mask from her face, its features mirroring her own as they’re revealed: pale, eyes sharp, expression blank and cold and profoundly familiar. It’s almost surreal after so long.

“What the…?”

The question snaps him out of his shock, and he shrugs. “Not much time for anything but killing as quickly as possible, but this seemed useful.”

“Hm,” she considers him for a moment before stepping inside properly, shutting the door behind her and striding over to sit beside him. He’s right back to being alarmed for a moment because she’s shrugging her dark uwagi from one shoulder and wordlessly offers her arm to him. There are already constellations of pin marks marring the pallid skin, some weeks old, some fresh. They’re shallow, and not clustered anywhere useful that he can tell, no important muscle groups would be disabled, no major blood vessels to puncture— but they would be painful. Zabuza focuses on those instead of the exposed sliver of her sarashi-bound chest, the curve of which has seemed just slightly more pronounced whenever he’s noticed it, in the past years.

She’s watching him carefully, moving a little closer when he refuses to take the proffered limb, like that was the problem. Hesitantly, he reaches out, takes its weight as she relaxes into his hands, either completely trusting or, more likely, simply uncaring. Her veins are stark, a river map under her skin, and he couldn’t ask for a better body to practice on.       

Kotone’s skin is warm against his bare fingertips, though he can still feel it dully though his gloved palms, skin soft over sturdy muscle. He’s careful about his space, and it’s not often that he makes physical contact, but he’s always surprised when he does. Somehow, he’s always convinced that she would be cold to the touch, unyielding, like porcelain, like steel. As if he expects the first needle to simply glance off of her instead of sliding effortlessly into place the way it does.

His jaw works away at nothing beneath the cloth wrapping his face, the room as silent with her in it as it had been alone. He can hear the groaning of old pipes in the wall, the murmur of life in the apartments adjacent, the movement from the floor above, and cutting through the stillness an infuriating compulsion to say **_something_** gnaws at him, a distracting restlessness that threatens his focus until it’s sated. He settles on an observation, something innocuous, meaningless, and casual.

 “Your hand healed well,” he notes as he returns to studying the topography of her bones and musculature. It would have to be instantaneous on a real battlefield, but the best way to learn the aim is to memorize it carefully when he has the chance. “Looks like you **_actually_** saw a medic, this time.” Her body means nothing to her, tactics largely dependent on simply enduring as much damage as is required until she’s won. Even by shinobi standards, her threshold for pain is remarkable. As a result, getting Kotone to a medic-ninja has always been like herding cats. This time, it was the threat of never making a proper fist again that needled her into compliance.

“I tried to leave,” she admits.

He scoffs dryly without taking his eyes off his work. He doesn’t need to look up to imagine the reproachful stare she’s giving him, relying solely on the slow breath he hears her suck in through her teeth.

“You didn’t go inside,” she insists. “It was far too busy, and I didn’t want to add to it for something minor. Not with all those civilians waiting, but,” she sighs, rolling her eyes. “I started puking and they wouldn’t let me fucking leave.”

“Kotone—”

“It wasn’t blood. I kept trying to tell them. It was water with blood **_in it_** —”

“Kotone,” he repeats more forcefully, and she pauses to look back to him before following his line of sight down to her arm. “Can you move?”  
  
She furrows her brow, concentrating intently on her fingertips, but they stay slack.   She prods at it with her free hand, and nods approvingly. “No. Can’t feel it, either.”

He draws them out carefully, maybe feeling a twinge of guilt when they come out bloody. “I suppose I should return the favour,” he offers, but she’s already shaking her head, short, quick little insistent motions.

 “Oh, no,” she assures him, as she tries to massage some feeling back into the deadened limb, “I have plenty to practice with. The torture and interrogations division has no shortage of viable subjects. Besides,” her placid expression falters for a moment. “I wouldn’t want to try any of that on you.”

All she’s done is pique his interest, and Zabuza turns to her, the set of his jaw and brow challenging. “I can handle pain, and I’m not afraid of your little tricks. Go on; show me.”

She studies him carefully, her face the familiar kind of unreadable he knows to be her true face, the void between expressions when she can’t decide what it is she wants to communicate. It’s much rarer than it was, to catch her like this. She can manufacture any response of her choosing, from bits and pieces she’s lifted from others, weave them together into something credible and useful so quickly it’s hard to tell it isn’t genuine— but emoting still doesn’t come naturally. It’s a conscious effort, and an strenuous one. Alone together, she’s free to drop the act.  

Slowly, almost warily, she reaches for one of the needles he’s left scattered on the table. They’re clean already, but she still disinfects it with the bottle of alcohol he’s left out beside it, her movements lopsided, slow and jerky on her non dominant side as the residual effects of the paralysis dissipate. She works without looking down, studying his face for any signs of hesitance and resigns herself to her task when he doesn’t move to stop her. He does tense for an instant, in surprise, when she reaches for the hem of his shirt, works her way up his spine, counting along his vertebrae to the right landmark and then following the line of his ribs a few inches to the side.

The needle bites into his side, a sting, just enough for a momentary twitch of his jaw, but nothing more. There’s a deep, unsettling feeling of its intrusion between his muscles, but that’s little more than a discomfort. Whatever she’s tried to do hasn’t worked, and he starts to let out a wry little laugh, some mildly cynical remark about the horrors of the interrogation division that’s forgotten as soon as he feels it catch in his throat.

An instinctual panic rises in his chest, a chill seeping down his spine as he tests it again, and can produce nothing but a rattling sound and a helpless twitch that jerks his shoulders forward but yields nothing.

His lungs won’t inflate.

Zabuza’s knuckles go white where he grips the back of the couch, blunted nails digging uselessly into the worn fabric, and it’s only the knowledge that she wouldn’t actually let anything happen to him that keeps him from frantically trying to tear the stupid thing out. That, and a stubborn desire to resist, and though he doesn’t look back to her for mercy, she must have caught something frantic in his expression because she carefully slips the needle free. The relief is immediate, a surge of cool air rushing in, and he gasps for it like a man drowning. He knows it had only been a moment, just the span of a few missed breaths, but it felt longer, and he can feel his face burning under the wrappings as he tries to wrangle his breathing back under his careful control.

“If you change the position slightly, you can keep them breathing, barely,” her voice is soft from behind him, and difficult to catch over his own heaving breath. “In conjunction with a few other places, you can pretty much shut a person down completely. Heart rate slows to a few beats per minute, and the massive reduction in metabolic need matches the minimal oxygen intake enough to keep them just this side of alive— if done properly. Great way to incapacitate a target you need moved without causing head trauma. Not a whole lot of other uses.”

“Not—” he tries to speak too soon, and it comes out as an airy huff. Zabuza grits his teeth, swallows hard, and forces his voice back together. “Not what I was expecting.”

“You were expecting pain.”

He’s relieved to find that she’s not watching him when he turns back, and she’s probably doing it deliberately, focusing instead on languidly flipping through his discarded textbook and not on his recovery.

“Even the average shinobi can tolerate a substantial amount of pain, let alone you,” she continues stopping at a particular chapter, on pressure points and the cardiopulmonary system. “I find I’ve been most successful with different approaches. Sleep deprivation, dehydration, asphyxiation, confusing the passage of time. It’s amazing what someone will tell you with the right chemical assistance… always good to verify the information when they’re compromised like that, though. In general, really.”  

Zabuza scowls, sliding the book away on the coffee table and making a note of the page before snapping it shut. To some degree all shinobi are trained to withstand torture, but the intelligence division’s operatives are at the greatest risk of capture. “How do you defend against something like that?”

“Really only one sure-fire way,” she says with a tiny shrug. “You don’t let them take you alive.” Kotone reaches down to the holster at her thigh, and slips something from a tiny interior pocket not present on the standard issue model. It’s a pill, round and glossy black. It’s the answer he expected, though he had hoped there was some alternative. She shows it to him for only a moment before swiftly returning it to its hiding place. “We may be working together soon. Generally, I’d do it myself, but if for any reason I can’t,” she pauses for a moment in thought, hands clasped in her lap before turning back to meet his gaze straight on. “Zabuza, I need you to—”

“I know.”

The sigh she lets out is relieved, and she chooses to smile. “Thank you. I know it’s a lot to ask, and really whoever’s nearest should be able to manage it, but… I trust you.  To get it done, properly.”

It’s a reality of her division that he’s always understood, though he’s never really taken the time to consider it as it applies to her. Even taking in her appearance now, he sees the reasoning.  The uniform is largely a formality for the Intelligence division, and as proud as she would be to wear it, she’s chosen to wear her own clothing. The dark uwagi and calf-length athletic pants she has on now are far better suited to taijutsu, without the roomy legs and heavy fabric of the uniform  getting in her way, and without the plush, warm, material cushioning the impact between her elbow and an opponent’s face. Beyond that, though, it leaves her immediately identifiable to the other members of any operation.

If in doubt, kill **_that_** one.

Zabuza’s jaw tightens imperceptibly beneath its cloth wrappings. Like hell he’s sacrificing an asset like her at the first sign of trouble— such a waste. If they’re well and truly outmatched he can see the need, and he’ll honour her request, but not before exhausting his options, and he trusts himself to hack through anything and everything an enemy might throw at them. He’s confident in his ability to keep her out of enemy hands. It will never come to that.

 “That won’t be a problem,” is what comes out. She seems satisfied, and answers with a resolute nod before getting up. She puts on the kettle and fixes herself something while Zabuza pulls the textbook back over and surreptitiously flips back to her previous page. Neither of them can discuss their work in much detail, and neither has much else to discuss, so they go about their business in comfortable silence.

She’s not making any effort to disguise her presence, but it’s somehow easier to concentrate while picking up on the soft padding of her bare feet on the kitchen floor than while straining to interpret the ambient noise in the rooms nearby.

Their apartment feels less empty, this way. Familiar, and right.

The thought is both comforting and unnerving in turn, and he quickly puts it from his mind.                        

 

_/ / / /_

A chilled fall afternoon awaits her when she emerges from the village’s main complex, blinking against the fuzzy glow of muffled sunlight filtering through the thick mist after days in the darkness of the T&I department’s basement.

She slips discreetly through the busy streets, noiseless and unobtrusive, a shadow passing through the crowd, mask hidden beneath the papers she clutches to her chest— nothing of any clandestine importance, of course, just notes to herself and research material for her own study. While the bulk of her time is spent with the interrogators or out in the field, Fuguki has, on occasion, asked her to assist the cypher branch when they’ve been particularly busy. They’re an odd bunch, but she finds she doesn’t mind them, and the work is interesting. It’s like a puzzle. She had taken to it faster than Fuguki had anticipated, so she’s eager to keep improving. 

Instead of turning for home, Kotone continues down quieter streets towards the far end of the village. She and Zabuza had seen each other more often in the past few months, their schedules seeming more in-line once they started to be assigned to the same missions. It’s rarer that she’s managed to come across Hatsuka, though, and the last time only briefly, in passing, on his way out of the village with the rest of his unit. He is indeed home, Momonga tells her when she answers the door, two of her younger cousins peeking out from behind her; however, he isn’t well enough for visitors. For years now, under Risu’s rather careless supervision he’s been slowly acclimatizing himself to Ekirei’s terrible poison, and had chanced a drastic increase in dosage that morning. Apparently, it’s been a common occurrence as of late. While it would be enough to kill anyone else a dozen times over, Momonga assures her that he’ll be fine with a little rest. “And if worst should come to worst, we do have the antidote.” Momo reassures, smiling gently. “I’ll tell him you came by.”

Kotone thanks her before taking her leave, and heads back into the misty streets with a sigh. She should spend the time until she’s needed back at the intelligence division training, but she reluctantly concedes that food and some sleep first might be beneficial in the long-run. The circles under her eyes are darker than usual when she catches her reflection in a shop window.

She takes a longer path home to avoid the bustle, trailing through the rocky, overgrown thickets of forest that spill in from between the mountains, and the abandoned training rings that skirt the edge of the village. It’s quieter here, but not empty. Civilians always give the training grounds a wide berth, but there are a group of children playing tag through one copse, and further down a cluster of teenagers is huddled together just off the path, shielded by trees, all hushed laughter and conspiratorial whispers. The little ones likely don’t know to be afraid of this area, and for the others the perceived danger is likely the appeal.

A murmur of familiar voices drifts through the fog, and with it the clash of weapons. It’s not the distinctive ring of metal on metal, but something else, and a heavy thudding that she feels more than she hears as she draws closer. Zakuro is pacing the edge of the ring, shouting advice and encouragements disguised as good-natured taunting as the two younger ninja appraise each other, weapons at the ready. It’s just practice, a sparring match between shinobigatana protégés, but the intensity is real, a heaviness in the misty air, and they circle slowly, like predators waiting to strike— like a wolf, like a shark.

Details are difficult for her to make out from this distance, the two young men just familiar blurs, but she’d know Zabuza anywhere and Kisame is uniquely unmistakable. She can tell as she approaches that Kisame has the upper hand— Zabuza’s shoulders are heaving as he stubbornly tries to disguise his fatigue, the sound masked, but not the wisps of hot breath that pass through the cloth wrappings to disappear into the fog. 

Besides Zakuro, though, there’s another spectator, standing back from the edge of the ring.  This one takes her a moment to identify.

The uniform is familiar instantly, but the much smaller figure doesn’t become obvious until she’s nearly reached the other kunoichi. She recognizes the other’s gentle features and the straight, soft brown hair spilling over her shoulders, and finally places the older teenager as one of the cypher nin.  “It’s Miru-san, isn’t it?” She asks as she stops next to her. She’d meant to carefully alert the other girl to her presence, but she’d been seemingly lost more deeply in wistful thought than Kotone had anticipated, and jumps at the sound.

“Oh! Ume-san,” she exclaims softly, her brows knitting together in concern as Miru looks up at her. “I didn’t see you there. How… how are you?” she asks carefully, and Kotone notes the trail of Miru’s eyes over the dark circles ringing her own. She knows she looks half-dead on a good day, and at the moment, there’s a persistent buzzing in her skull and a heaviness tugging at her eyelids.  

“I’m fine, thank you. How are you?”  

Miru’s mouth quirks disapprovingly, but she doesn’t push the issue, instead turning her attention back to the sparring match in progress. They’ve clashed again, Zabuza narrowly deflecting a blow from Samehada with the head cleaver.

“He’s quite something, isn’t he?” Miru says finally, a little smile tugging at her lips, attention still fully focused on the two swordsmen-in-training. “You’re lucky you get to work with him so often. I’ve… been thinking of striking up a conversation,” she admits sheepishly, “I might be imagining it, but he seems so… lonely, sometimes.”

Kotone recognizes the far-away look in her eyes. It’s a hint of the same dreamy, distracted look Hatsuka has always gotten around Kiku.

Oh.

There’s a sinking feeling in her gut, presumably because the other girl is looking to her for some kind of encouragement and this is completely outside of her area of expertise.  She lacks the capacities of a feeling human heart, and she’s certain that she’ll never elicit that kind of attention herself. Miru isn’t like that, and now she has to consider the other girl’s perspective. She’s small, and delicate, and pretty in the way Kotone isn’t, and there’s a certain gentleness to her that rarely survives this long into a ninja’s career. As for him, though…

They’ve never discussed anything of the kind, so she has to extrapolate. He’s an excellent shinobi, but different than she is in many ways— **_alive_** in a different way. There’s a spark of something inside him that she’s never had, a fire. So perhaps, along with it…

“I can’t say for sure if he’d be open to the idea,” she answers carefully, giving Miru what she means to be a reassuring smile, and ignoring the cold, nauseous sensation settling deeper into the pit of her stomach, “but there’s no harm in trying it. He can be a bit… prickly, but he’s more reasonable than most people think. He certainly isn’t going to take your head off.”

Miru stares at her. A moment of puzzled silence passes between them.

“I… ah. I meant—”

“Oh,” Kotone replies flatly, almost able to **_feel_** the unusually slow speed of the figurative gears in her head spinning through thick mental fog as they process the dawning realization. “ ** _Oh_**.” She shakes her head, smiling again, suddenly far more certain. “It’s more that we both work for Fuguki-san, and really only see each other in passing,” she admits, turning her attention back to the match. Kisame’s extraordinary stamina is clearly giving him the upper hand, and she can tell that Zabuza’s own reserves are fading. Normally this would be the time to thicken the mist and retreat for a moment of recovery, but there’s no such opportunity in a sparring match, and his movements are slowing steadily. “He keeps to himself, but from what I gather, Hoshigaki-san seems like an amicable kind of person. I think he very well might appreciate some company.”

Miru beams at her, her warm smile giving way to wince at the sound of Kisame’s kick connecting squarely with Zabuza’s midsection, and sending him sailing through the air, then skidding to a stop across the ring. He’s up in an instant, but Kisame’s lingering at the far end, and the casual nature of the bout gives him a chance to grumble and dust himself off before stalking back over to where the Executioner’s Blade has embedded itself in the sediment.     

“Feel free to join in, if you’d like,” Kisame calls to her, a wide grin exposing his mouthful of razor sharp teeth. “It would be fun to take on two of Zakuro-senpai’s students at once.”   

As far as she knows, none of the cypher nin are particularly skilled at actual combat, but extending an invitation seems like the only polite course of action. Kotone turns to the smaller girl, adding a bit of energy to the smile she’s wearing. “What do you say, Miru-san? Would you like to make it two-on-two?”

Miru stifles a coy giggle behind her hand, shaking her head. “I’ll pass, thank you. I think I’m better suited to watching this sort of thing.”

Kotone nods, and starts towards a safe patch of ground where she could set her study materials. “If you’re su—”

She blinks, vision coming back into what, for her, passes as focus.

There’s a dull ache in her foot, and a murmuring sound, and nothing is where it’s supposed to be. Kisame is still paused where he was, but Zabuza is striding across the ring towards her, only a few feet away despite his position a moment before. Zakuro is trailing behind him. In an instant, Zabuza’s scowling at her, saying nothing as he presses a hand to her forehead, then leans alarmingly close to study her pupils, easily diverting her reflexive attempt to swat him away.  Apparently satisfied that she isn’t concussed or feverish, Zabuza stops, his eyes flickering to Zakuro and Kisame over his shoulder, before stepping back with an impatient huff, brusquely folding his arms across his chest.

The gentle murmuring sound beside her clears into Miru’s voice, urgently trying to get her attention.

“I’m sorry,” Kotone starts, thoughts still hazy, “were you saying something?”

Miru’s expression is half startled, half concerned as she hurries to gather up the books and papers Kotone finds scattered across the pine-littered ground when she turns her gaze downwards, and Miru halts her with a firm look when she moves to help. “Ume-san, you just…. froze, mid-sentence. Your things fell out of your hands.” She offers them back carefully, and slowly, Kotone’s shaking fingers obey and take hold of her materials.  

Zakuro comes to a stop behind Zabuza. “When was the last time you ate or slept?” He lets out a heavy sigh when she hesitates, pinching at the bridge of his nose and shaking his head in a familiar disapproving gesture. “If you have to think about it, it’s been too long. Zabuza, take her home, would you?” The boy gives a curt nod in response, and with a resolute scowl that leaves no room for argument, grabs her by the arm, in passing.

“Terribly sorry about the disruption. I believe Magnetsu should be home, and he’s always eager to borrow the Head-Cleaver,” she can hear Zakuro continue to Kisame as she’s led away. She focuses on the sound, vaguely aware of the path ahead, and the way Zabuza’s keeping close behind her like he thinks she’s going to collapse. 

He doesn’t let up until they’ve reached the apartment, wordlessly directing her to a kitchen chair, and shoving her books to the far side of the table when she lays them out in front of her. “Food,” he snaps, slamming a container of leftovers into the newly cleared space as forcefully as the plastic will allow, “sleep.”

“I just want to—” He scowls when she reaches for her things, leaning his weight onto the stack so that she can’t retrieve them. .

“Food,” he repeats more slowly, eyes narrowed. “ ** _Sleep_**.”  

She’s about to retort, because what difference does it make to him? But, she supposes, sighing and leaning her chair back on its two hind legs to grab a set of chopsticks from the appropriate drawer, if it wasn’t for her he’d be off training with Kisame instead of glowering at her from across their kitchen table. So she submits, shoveling the leftovers into her mouth as quickly a she can before heading back for her room, in hopes of a nap just long enough to appease him.

She doesn’t remember falling asleep, but the next thing Kotone knows, the dull glow of sunrise has lit up the thick fog outside her window, and it’s already time to get back to work. She’s not technically **_late_** when she finally slows her breakneck pace at the bottom of the Main Complex’s stairs, but there’s still a guilty knot in her stomach when another interrogator immediately relays that Fuguki has been looking for her.

Peeking inside finds her superior is in his office, his hulking form dwarfing the massive desk, rows upon rows of scrolls and folders of documents jam packed into the shelves behind him. “You wanted to see me, sir?” she begins when he doesn’t look up from the dossier laid out before him.

“Ah, there you are. Come inside, Ume. Close the door behind you.” He smiles at the sound as the heavy door clunks into place. “Ume, how old are you?”

“Fi-“ she reconsiders. “Almost sixteen, sir,” she says, drawing herself up to her full height. It’s not often she feels small, but between his sheer size and the way he’s looking her over, Fuguki’s presence completely overwhelms the room.

“Hmm,” his mouth quirks for a moment, but the smile only falters temporarily. “You’re tall,” he assures her. “You look older. Here, I have an assignment for you,” he gathers up the loose papers he’d been studying into their folder and holds it out to her, the reach of his massive arms easily spanning the distance.

A brief glance at the pages and she recognizes the assignment in question as one belonging to one of the only other women in the department, a kunoichi named Ayane about ten years her senior. A kunoichi with certain competencies beyond Kotone’s own skillset.

“Sir, this is—”

“Ayane was killed last night on another mission. Is there a problem, Ume?”

 “No sir,” she replies reflexively.

“Good, good. I’ll admit, you aren’t my first choice, but you’re going to have to do,” his chair creaks as he leans back. “After considering all possible avenues, I’ve determined this to be the most certain method to isolate the target. I’d suggest plenty of alcohol to helps things along. And Ume,” Fuguki’s smile reveals rows of razor sharp teeth. She’s spent a long time trying to get her own smile to look genuine, and can’t help thinking that there’s something not right about this one: a bit too wide, showing too many sharpened teeth, not reaching his eyes— it’s sickly. Insincere.  “Your target has a weakness for pretty women. Do at least try to look like one.”

/ / / /

 

It’s a rather seedy dive for someone of his standing, but it’s more exciting than the higher-class establishments their fathers favour, and really isn’t scandalizing them half the fun? Besides, if they get rowdy drunk and get themselves thrown out, no one of any importance will be around to see. The drinks are abundant around the table—the festivity is a bit premature, but there will be a lot to celebrate once he pulls this off, and it’s as good as done. His friends aren’t privy to the details, of course. Only what he’s conveyed to them—that something big is about to happen. Something that promises to be very lucrative. Tarou smiles over the rim of his glass as something across the room catches his eye, and he contemplates other ways to reward himself for his success.

There are other women here who are usually more his type, but this one’s been giving him shy little looks all evening, and though he’d dismissed her initially, with every glass of sake she’s looking cuter. Judging by his friends’ reactions around the table, they don’t agree, but Tarou waves them off and strides over from their booth to the bar (with only a few missed steps), and slides confidently into the empty seat beside her.

The girl’s somewhere younger than his twenty-three, hunched nervously over her glass, and she gives a surprised little squeak as he sidles up beside her.  “Sorry, sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you. But you were sitting here all alone…” Tarou begins, before introducing himself. She doesn’t seem to recognize him, or his name, and he’s hurt for a moment before realizing that she must not be from around here. He’s certainly never seen her here before. Her name is Yumi, and she’s from the mountains up north, she tells him when he asks. It’s her first time away from the farm, stopping here on her way to visit family farther up the coast, and she’s never been in a town this big before, let alone a stone’s throw from the Daimyo’s palace. Tarou grins, and tells her all about the vital position his father holds in the Daimyo’s court, and his own newly appointed role therein. He slides an arm around her, wanting to say something about how he can arrange a tour, if she wants, but when he squeezes her shoulder and feels the muscle beneath clench, he loses his train of thought entirely. “Wow,” he blurts out, as he rubs at the little white flowers sprinkled across the dusty purple fabric of her kimono, the thick material hiding a surprisingly sturdy build. He squints, leaning in closer to look her up and down, and maybe he’s not seeing very clearly because it takes him a moment but—

She interrupts him again, shyly, toying with the cup in her hand and watching the light glint of the liquid as it slides back and forth. She says something about farm work, about heavy lifting and long hours, but he isn’t really listening until she asks him about himself.

He’s very important, he tells her. The words are starting to slur together, so he pays careful attention to enunciate as clearly as possible, and she doesn’t seem to notice. Has he mentioned his important new job? It’s very important. He’s very important. His father is very important and now he has an important job of his own in the Daimyo’s court. She nods, starry eyed, and pours him another drink as she congratulates him.

He lays a hand on her knee, surprised again for a moment at the firm muscle beneath as he reaches up her thigh, feeling for the seam of her kimono. He feels her seize up, but she doesn’t pull away, just murmurs quietly about people watching, and the next thing he knows he’s leading her back to his room upstairs, stumbling as he hangs off of her. By the time they reach his room he’s successfully snaked a hand down the front of her kimono, and pulls her into an awkward kiss the moment they step inside. He’s too engrossed in his own doings to be bothered that she isn’t participating. Yumi’s reaching away from his hold on her, and his slow progression towards his bed, concerned only with getting the door closed behind them. Likely, Tarou thinks with a smirk, so the other guest that had been coming up the hallway behind them won’t be able to peek in on their tryst in passing. She’s able to slide the door shut with her foot, and a moment later there’s the soft sound of another room down the hallway’s door closing. “There,” Tarou says against the shell of her ear, “alone at last.”

“Finally.”

More to herself than to him, the voice is different— still quiet, but not the quavering whispers of the girl he’d met down at the bar. He blinks in surprise at the sudden change, but he’s held firmly in place by an impossibly strong grip when he tries to pull away. A sharp pain bites into his back, and then the crushing pressure on his arm is released as the girl lets him fall to the ground, long strides bringing her across the room in an instant. His bewilderment turns to indignation when she promptly makes her way over to his packed backs and overturns them, one hand struggling to adjust her rumpled kimono back into place as the other rifles through the expensive clothes and other fine things scattered on the floor. A bottle of sake he’d been saving for later rolls away from the crumpled heap of fine fabric. 

He screams for her to stop. At least, he means to, but nothing comes out. Nothing comes in. He can’t breathe, he can’t move, just struggle to suck in air and feel his heart racing in his chest. The drink’s slowing his thought process, but the cold panic now rushing through his veins is sobering enough that he realizes how far gone he is, how his body’s barely responding to any of his frantic attempts to flee. His feet won’t steady enough to support him, and he’s given up on righting himself in favour of clawing at his throat, at whatever phantom thing is choking him. He’s been discovered. He knows that when she stops on the book of poetry hidden in his bag— that, of all the fine valuable things in there— this isn’t a robbery. She’s… There’s a word for what she is, but it’s just out of reach. Her eyes are ice cold when she kneels before where he’s sprawled, and it’s the pitiless expression of a housecat that’s cornered prey.  

“My village has intercepted ciphered messages from people in your circle,” she begins, in that same voice that was so different from the one downstairs, “from the court of the Land of Fire’s Daimyo. Before she died, a colleague of mine noted the same book in another target’s possession. You’re using phrases from this book as keys, aren’t you?”  He can’t take his eyes off the book in her hand, staring in horror as she slowly waves it back and forth, noting his fixation. Slowly she extends her free hand, and whatever’s embedded in his back twitches. “There are pages marked; with or without you, I’ll find the right phrase eventually. But if you tell me what it is, I’ll make this stop.” 

He nods desperately, and immediately the pressure decreases just enough to pull in a scant lungful of air. “Pebble beach,” he gasps, barely audible even to himself. “It’s ‘pebble beach.”   

The book flips open in her hand to the last page he’d marked— he wasn’t supposed to do that. They’d been so adamant that he wasn’t supposed to do that— and snaps closed a second later. Those dead blue eyes close in concentration for a moment, pale lips mouthing soundlessly and with a dawning horror like icewater down his back he remembers his father and the others gathered around that great stupid chart each time a new message came in. She’s doing it in her **_head_**. 

Seemingly satisfied, the girl’s eyes snap back open— no. No, not a girl. Between intoxication and fear his mind is in foggy chaos, but he knows with absolute certainty that this thing before him isn’t human. Monster… demon… animal… finally the word on the tip of his tongue occurs to him: Shinobi— kunoichi. A **_weapon_**.

“Thank you for your cooperation. I promise I’ll make this quick.”  

Thankfully, he doesn’t seem to realize what’s happening as she swiftly draws the needles from his spine and jams them into his chest. He’d been afraid, but at least the look in his eyes had still been more confusion than anything else.

It’s unsettling, killing someone who can’t fight back; but If he’s plotting against her village, he has to go— and judging by the portion of the latest ciphered message she had tested, he had been. This isn’t one of her villagers, but a threat to them. And it can’t be allowed to continue.

Kotone rights herself, still trying to adjust the stupid kimono back into place as she tucks the book into her sleeve and returns to the crumpled pile of her target’s belongings, rifling through them for anything valuable and portable enough to have been of interest to a thief before taking up the bottle of sake and smashing it. 

She stabs at the corpse with the broken bottle, disguising both her expert aim and choice of weapon with a series of messy, badly placed slices and one lucky strike to the heart.  She has to be absolutely certain that this is staged properly: the young up and coming political figure drank too much, went back to his room with a stranger (she’d be sure to let people see her), and was murdered for his valuables. This involves the Daimyo’s court itself, and Kirigakure must appear completely uninvolved.  It would certainly have been simpler to abduct him and take the information she wanted, she muses as she climbs out the hotel room’s window and drops down into a patio, but disappearing conspirators have ‘ninja’ written all over them.

She moves carefully through the little garden behind the inn, keeping to the shadows but only as a civilian might. The screaming starts just as she’s crossed the courtyard, frantic activity audible from the room she’s just left. Someone looking like hotel staff finally peers out the window and spots her, and now and it’s definitely time to get out.  She takes off at an impressive but not impossible pace for a normal person, towards the wooded area out back. It’s an easy thing to lose a bunch of civilians in a pine forest when she’s used to outmaneuvering other ninja, and it’s perhaps a bit mean, letting them pursue for a while before switching places with a feral tabby she’d noticed lounging high in a tree. She’ll let them believe they’d wasted all this time chasing a cat while the killer escaped in another direction, rather than simply having disappeared.

Once she’s both established her character’s escape and truly lost her pursuers, she can start home in earnest, flying through the countryside as fast as her legs (and impractical attire) will allow.  It’s easy to slip into autopilot during the run, and she should be focused on finishing the message she’d tested, but her thoughts keep slipping back to a physical discomfort.  

Kotone is a blank slate, an empty vessel to be filled and coloured by whatever her mission requires.  Tonight, though, she had found the illusion to be more precarious than usual— a further departure from her baseline, an unfamiliar environment, there are too many variables to isolate the exact cause. She had created Yumi’s persona to be someone enthralled by his greasy sort of charm, but Kotone herself was certainly not.

Had there been something toxic on his hands? She can still feel the man’s grasp on her skin, warm, and sweaty, and sticky, like it’s left some sort of contaminant on her thighs, on her chest, and she wants to scald it away with hot water, peel the infection away with a knife, anything. Her stupid, stupid chest. There isn’t much there, mostly just pectoral muscle, but It still feels like a vulnerability, and she endeavors to do something about it as soon as she can. If she tightens her sarashi enough, it’ll be like they’re not even there…  

She keeps trying to focus but the memory of his tongue in her mouth makes her retch, and she imagines that trying to swallow a live octopus would have a similar sensation.  It’s more difficult to put from her mind than she would have thought. No, no, the message. **_The message_**. One letter at a time it starts to take shape, and she picks up her pace as the glow of the village’s lights comes into view.

She wants to go home and shower for hours until she’s finally gotten rid of the stink of sake and smoke, finally gotten the feeling of his hands off of her, finally washed Yumi down the drain. She will; but first, her duty.   

Kotone finally skids to a halt in the middle of the cipher division’s main office,clothing disheveled, covered in blood, and reeking like a bar, and slams a book of shitty aristocratic poetry onto the nearest desk.  She recognizes Miru among them, all frozen at the sudden intrusion, expressions ranging from bewildered to horrified. “I need to talk to Suikazan-San, **_right now_**.”   

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not happy with this but I'm getting the feeling I will never be happy with this and it was getting so long that this seemed like a god point to end the chapter even though I had more planned. I'm so sorry it's taken me so long to update, to those of you who are still with me on this, thank you from the bottom of my heart. It means a lot and I really, really hope you stick with me <3
> 
> Also. I'm just going to like.. ignore everything that's coming from Boruto, canon-wise. I enjoy it, but I can't recalibrate everything again omfg OTL

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all :) This is a re-vamped version of a story I started years ago (on fanfiction.net called Breathe Again), but never finished due to unexpected directions in the manga that sort of threw off my game plan. Now, with everything being finished and me (hopefully) being a better writer, I decided to tackle it again. I'm posting this on FF.net too, but I really love AO3 and thought it would be neat to post this here too, and hopefully some of you will enjoy it. Did some slight editing to neaten it up before I posted it here, but the gist is the same. 
> 
> To me, Kirigakure is probably the most interesting place in the Naruto universe, especially in terms of the huge cultural upheval from what we hear in the Wave Country arc, to the way things are when Mei is introduced. We don't see very much of it, so I'm going to have to be making some assumptions and taking some creative liberties. Hopefully you find my take on things plausible <3


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